


First Time for Everything

by crzy_wrtr10



Series: Special Investigations and Tactical Response Unit AU [3]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Athos is grumpy, Attempt at Humor, Bedside Vigils, Boys Will Be Boys, Constance is a badass, Cuddling & Snuggling, Episode references, Established Relationship, F/M, Fencing, Fencing Inaccuracies, First Meetings, First Time, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, Gen, Hallucinations, Hospitals, Idiots Will Be Idiots, Idiots in Love, Inappropriate Humor, Law Enforcement, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Medical Procedures, Military Inaccuracies, One Shot, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Male/Male Relationships, Police Procedural, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, SITRU, Sharing a Bed, Slice of Life, Some Humor, Stealth Crossover, Still don't know what I'm doing, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, The Author Regrets Nothing, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Weapons, Whump, author is crazy, idek, pop culture references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-01-14 23:51:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 76,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1283380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crzy_wrtr10/pseuds/crzy_wrtr10
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first times, failed attempts, second tries, and general life and times of Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and d'Artagnan, Team One of the Special Investigations and Tactical Response Unit based in Quebec City. </p><p> </p><p>  <i>(Stories are in no particular order and probably won't be connected to each other unless specified.)</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The LSD Effect

**Author's Note:**

> I seriously can't thank you all enough for the love and encouragement for this AU and these particular idiots. Ya'll rock.
> 
> So. This first one is something I thought of earlier tonight. I was on quite a bit of medication after my surgery, and it gave me some **weird** dreams. I figured the amount of chaos these four managed to find they had probably had some incidents with medications. Athos gets the brunt of it this time. With Percocet.
> 
> Hasn't seen a beta. Any mistakes you find are mine. Feel free to point 'em out.

He’d wanted to be romantic. He’d had it all set up, too. Aramis was supposed to be home by six-thirty, dinner would have been served at seven, and the rest of the evening would be spent on the slow but sure trip down the hallway to the bedroom where all sorts of fantastic, sweaty shenanigans would take place. 

Only it was going on eight, Aramis was still delayed in a meeting that had run _beyond_ late – he’d called at six forty-five to apologize and let off a string of fluent Spanish Porthos was sure wasn’t anything fit for polite company – and Porthos had finally given in and eaten a plate of lukewarm lasagna around seven-thirty.

He’d put the leftovers in the fridge and cleaned up the kitchen, tucking away the white pillar candles he’d decorated the table with back in with their emergency storm supplies. Hell, he was bored enough to contemplate taking out the garbage, something he and Aramis all but flipped a coin for each week. 

The door to the apartment shut; Porthos leaned against the counter as Aramis appeared in the doorway, ever-present backpack slung over his shoulder. He rested a shoulder against the molding, chewed on his bottom lip, and softly said, “I’m sorry.”

“S’not your fault,” Porthos said with a shrug. 

“Still doesn’t make it right.” He ducked his chin and looked at his boyfriend through hair hanging over his forehead. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“I know you will.”

Aramis dropped the backpack as Porthos stalked forward, crowding him back into the entryway and against the wall. He tipped his chin up, fingers curled into Porthos’s shirt at his sides in order to draw him in closer. 

They rubbed noses for a second or two until they slotted together in the right way, Aramis’s lips opening under the gentle but persistent pressure of Porthos’s mouth. 

“Long day,” Porthos breathed, trailing kisses along Aramis’s jaw. “Hungry?”

He made a noise of approval deep in his throat. “Mm – yes, but…” He let out a shuddering breath as muscled thigh slipped between his own. “I want dessert first.”

The world tilted; Aramis kept a fistful of shirt in his possession at all times as he was walked backward down the short hall to their bedroom. His legs hit the mattress and he tumbled onto the duvet, taking Porthos with him.

With the exception that they were both still wearing too many clothes and neither of them could reach the tube of KY in the nightstand yet, it was perfect. 

Until the _Benny Hill_ theme song started to play from Aramis’s back pocket.

“Damn it,” he muttered, wiggling around until he could get at his phone. 

Porthos buried his nose in the crook of Aramis’s neck and pressed kisses to the bits of skin he could reach without moving his head much. Even so it was awkward for Aramis to get the phone to his ear, and he finally answered it on speaker. “Hello?”

_”Hi guys. Hope – is this a good time?_

“Sort of?” Aramis buried the fingers of his free hand in Porthos’s hair, tugging gently when the bigger man let out a snort that was half amusement, half irritation. 

_”Look, can you meet us at the hospital? Athos and I – we ran into some trouble.”_

“How much trouble?” Porthos asked, rolling off of Aramis. 

_”Not – no, Athos, don’t touch that, okay? Don’t make it worse. I’ll give you the details later, but he’s got a dislocated shoulder and a broken collarbone. I need to know his allergies.”_

“He’s not allergic to anything,” Aramis said, leaving the phone on the bed in order to adjust himself in his jeans. 

_”So they can give him some painkillers?”_

“Yes. Wait – no. No!” He picked up the device and started after Porthos, glad he hadn’t even had a chance to take off his shoes yet. “He can’t have Percocet!”

Porthos shuddered. “No. Anything but _that_.”

_”You just said he wasn’t allergic to anything!”_

“He’s not,” Aramis explained slowly, following Porthos down the stairs and out of their apartment building toward his car parked on the street. “But he can’t have Percocet.”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“We’ll explain when we get there, but he can’t have Percocet,” Porthos said as they got in the car. “Which hospital?”

 _”Hopital General de Quebec. They know us the best._ ”

Yes, the staff there did indeed know them the best. They also knew to keep the four of them together, if possible. It helped keep whoever was in the hospital bed calm. 

“Okay. We’ll be there soon. d’Artagnan,” Aramis added, channeling his inner Athos with a tone that left no room for argument. “Absolutely _no_ Percocet.”

Whatever d’Artagnan said was drowned out by a flurry of sound on the other end; Aramis ended the call. 

“God, I hope they don’t give him that,” Porthos muttered. 

“You and me both.” If there was one more thing he never wanted to witness again it was _that_.

 

 **Three Years Ago**  
“You can go right on in, gentlemen,” the nurse in blue scrubs said, motioning with her clipboard to the little curtain cubicle. “He stitched up just fine, and we’ve given him something for the pain.”

“Thank you,” Aramis said, fiddling with his shirttails to make sure his holster was covered. He felt odd about wandering armed through a hospital, though the prospect of _not_ carrying was odder still. 

He poked his head around the curtain, Porthos literally breathing down his neck. 

Athos, sitting bare-chested on a gurney, didn’t look up from where his hands twisted nervously in his lap. Something hard and cold settled in Aramis’s chest under his breastbone, and he hesitantly crept closer with a soft, “Athos?”

He finally looked up, eyes wide and with a forced serenity. They flicked between Porthos and the doorway, and landed only briefly on Aramis. 

“Athos?” Aramis tried again. 

“Who – who’re you?” Athos brought the hand not in a sling to his mouth, biting at his knuckles.

Porthos swore quietly; Aramis stiffened. 

“It’s us,” he said. “Aramis and Porthos.”

“No, no, no,” Athos said, waving a hand at the pair of them. “I meant _them._ ” He pointed to the open doorway. “Who is _that_?”

They turned in unison, expecting a doctor or nurse hovering in the hallway beyond. 

It was empty. 

Aramis, without stopping to think about it, crossed the distance between them and eased onto the gurney next to Athos. Under a clear bandage on Athos’s bicep was a line of neat stitches from where they medical professionals had dug out an errant bullet. There had probably been some wall fragments, too. 

Things had gotten hairy for a minute or two. They had gotten considerably less confusing after Porthos put a bullet in a New York City transplant mob boss. Things had been slightly up hill from there.

“Athos,” he said softly, “what do you see?”

“A bear.” Athos picked at the blood spatter on his jeans, not doubt from himself. “A big yellow bear with a red hat.” His words slurred together a little, and he seemed to take second or two to coordinate his thoughts when he was ready to speak.

Porthos eased out into the hallway with the intent to find Athos’s doctor.

“There’s a clown behind him,” he mentioned casually. 

“Oh?” Aramis looked in the same direction when Athos did. 

He nodded solemnly and said, “He’s holding a gun on the bear.”

Aramis’s only thought was _well, that escalated quickly._

“It’s okay,” he said with a shudder. “The clown killed the bear but then the purple spiders ate the clown.”

“Athos – “

“S’not what my Mama called me.”

Feeling like the air had been sucked out of the room, Aramis leaned forward so he could see Athos’s face. “Oh?”

He shook his head vigorously enough for Aramis to worry about falling over. “Nope. Mama called me Olivier. That’s what she named me.”

This was a thread of lucid conversation Aramis could get behind. “My mother named me Rene.”

There was a low whistle from the doorway; Porthos stood there with a petite woman in a white coat. 

“Olivier? Will you stay right here? Porthos and I want to talk with your doctor and then we’ll take you home.” He made sure Athos was going to stay where he was before he headed for the doctor. 

“Don’t have a home,” Athos called, swaying slightly now that Aramis’s stabilizing shoulder was gone. “Hotel.”

The cold feeling in his chest intensified, and he wondered if this was what it was like to navigate a minefield. 

“You live in a hotel?” Porthos asked from the doorway.

Athos looked at his hands again. “Yup. Don’t wan’ the house. M’wife killed my little brother and she’s still – she still…” he trailed off. 

“It’s like she’s still there in the house,” Aramis finished for him. “Tell you what. We talk to your doctor, and then, at least for a little bit, we take you to _our_ house. You stay with us until you find a place that’s home.” He glanced at Porthos and saw only acceptance – and a smattering of love – in the other man’s eyes. 

While Athos neither fully accepted nor declined, he seemed a little more settled. Aramis considered it a positive, and he joined the others while rubbing absently at his sternum. 

“It’s a side effect of the Percocet,” the woman said. “In a small percentage of adolescent and adult patients it has unusual effects. We’re working on filling a script for another type of painkiller, and he should – hopefully – hit a point where he sleeps.”

“If he doesn’t?” Porthos had to ask.

“He will. It’s just a matter of sooner or later.” She gave them a reassuring smile. “We’re working on his discharge papers, too, and we’ll give you both when they’re ready.”

“Thank you.” Aramis ran his fingers through his hair. There wasn’t anything to say – not that he could find the right words, which was a definite first for him – and he settled for resting his forehead against the wall. 

“Athos? What are you doing?”

He turned; Athos had his head tipped back and was staring at the ceiling with a mix of fascination and apprehension. 

“I’m counting the blue ants on the ceiling,” Athos said placidly. “They’re moving a tree to the river, and it’s quite the process.”

Aramis swore no one would _ever_ give him Percocet again. Porthos decided it was better to go with the flow than fight the tide, and plopped himself down next to Athos while asking if he’d managed to count the ones in the corner. He was dutifully informed they were orange, and therefore didn’t contribute toward the total.

 

“Seriously?” d’Artagnan said, arms over his chest. 

“Seriously.” Porthos shoved his hands in his pockets. “Athos on Percocet is like Aramis on acid.”

Aramis punched him hard on the arm as d’Artagnan’s eyes went huge and he squeaked out, “You’ve done _acid_?”

“ _No_ ,” he growled. “It wasn’t acid. It couldn’t even count as mushrooms.” He glared at the bigger man. “I’ll get even.”

“I look forward to it,” Porthos said with a grin. 

“Of course you do,” he muttered. “Hey.”

Athos made his way unsteadily down the hallway, one hand on the wall for balance. His right arm was strapped to his chest and he was paler than normal, but he otherwise seemed alright. 

And not likely to be counting blue ants on the ceiling anytime soon.

“Vicodin,” Athos said, holding up a pill bottle. 

“Nap time for you, then.” Aramis smiled sweetly.

“I need a drink first.” He walked right by the three of them, intent on the pneumatic doors to the parking lot. 

“You’re gonna need more than that,” Porthos called to him. “You’ve got to explain to Treville why you need medical leave.”

Athos’s response was less than fit for polite company. Aramis found the purple spiders a smidgen more appealing of a prospect than a royally pissed off Treville.


	2. Three is Company

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"We need a sniper?" Porthos asked._
> 
> _"We need a third," Athos said._
> 
>  
> 
> A bored Athos is an Athos with artistic merit, Porthos is along for the ride, Aramis used to _like_ camping, and Treville has a moment of brilliance. 
> 
> Or: how the duo became a trio.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. 
> 
> I had the idea to do a "duo to trio' fic, and two days and 6800 words later here it is.
> 
> This is one where I honestly don't even know what happened. 
> 
> Here's some of the songs I listened to while writing this sucker:  
> "Best Day of My Life" - American Authors  
> "Everybody Loves Me" - One Republic  
> "Wacky Sax (The Benny Hill Theme)"  
> "Dueling Banjos"
> 
> I swear Treville's going to have a stroke before this series is done with all the shit these three get into.
> 
> I don't own anything you recognize and the government takes all my money for student loans. And on that note, enjoy.

Athos sat in the chair in front of Treville’s desk with his heels leaving dirt and tiny stones on the topmost paper. He had a cup of sharpened pencils in one hand and was using a quick, hard flick of the wrist to fling the writing utensil point-first into the ceiling tile with the other. 

“He’s going to kick your ass across the yard if he finds you in here with your feet on his desk,” Porthos said, leaning in the open doorway. 

He shrugged, pulling another pencil from the cup. It joined the others on the ceiling. Porthos took a step inside the office and, if he craned his neck at just an angle, he could see Athos had at least half a fleur-de-lis outlined. His chuckle rolled across the space between them, and even Athos cracked a smile. 

Not a big one. Just a curl of his lip, really, but to Porthos it was the same as a grin.

“Like he’s going to appreciate the new décor, too,” Constance said on her way into the office. “Treville’s been delayed but called me to tell you congratulations on your new sniper.” She handed Athos a photo. “He’ll be here by the end of the week. There’s a no return policy for you boys, too, so you at least need to make an _effort_ with this one.” Her eyes roved over Athos with his pencils and Porthos lounging in against the wall like he was on his couch instead of on the clock. She looked as though she wanted to say something, but left, instead, with only a small smile on her face.

“We need a sniper?” Porthos asked.

“We need a third,” Athos said. He looked at the photograph in his hand. Dark eyes stared back at him from a mop of equally dark hair, though there was the hint of mischief in them. 

“He’s young.” He took the photo from Athos and flipped it over. The only thing written on the back – in Treville’s handwriting – was _R. Aramis d’H._. 

“And that makes us old?” 

Porthos backpedaled rapidly. “’Course not.”

Athos’s eyebrows headed for his hairline. 

“Do we have to pick this one up or can he at least find his way here?” he said, handing it back to Athos.

“Someone should have given him instructions.” Athos set the photo on the desk, then pulled another pencil from the cup. “Keep a look out for Treville, would you? The recipient should only see the finished work, not the progress.”

Porthos’s steady laughter rolled through the office and into the hallway.

 

Working with Treville’s Musketeers – the nickname had stuck so long ago everyone, the captain included, had given up trying to change it and instead embraced it – had given Constance a finely tuned instinct for people sneaking up on her. 

She also had a better self-preservation instinct than half the secretaries before her, but that was neither here nor there. 

It was that same instinct Treville looked for and cultivated in his men that had Constance looking up around ten in the morning at the end of the week. The young man - _ridiculously_ so, in her opinion – was nothing remarkable at first glance. He was smartly dressed in dark wash jeans, a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, and a pair of scuffed leather lace-up boots. The only things he carried with him were the black case in his hand and the blue backpack on his shoulders. 

“Can I help you?” Constance asked, though she had a feeling this was Team One’s new recruit. 

“I’m here to see Treville,” he said. “I’m Aramis.”

A flicker of movement behind him caught her eye and she had to force herself not to look at Athos and Porthos eavesdropping noticeably in the hallway. 

_”Welcome to Quebec,”_ she said in French. 

_”Thank you,”_ he said with a smile. 

Her heart melted, and she had a feeling he did it often. Maybe he could convince Athos his face wouldn’t break if he gave it a go more than once a decade.

She blushed faintly at the thought. Athos didn’t have a lot of reasons to smile courtesy of his devil of an ex-wife, though it lightened his features considerably when he did. 

“Treville is in his office at the moment on a conference call with Richelieu,” she said sweetly, smiling widely as the sound of shouting once again started from behind the closed door. “He’ll see you then. In the meantime – you two! Stop trying to look like you’re not eavesdropping where you shouldn’t be and come meet Aramis.”

He turned and froze; Constance watched the muscles in his shoulders and neck stiffen. 

“Athos de la Fere,” Athos said, hand extended for Aramis to shake. 

“Porthos du Vallon.” He shook hands as well.

“Rene,” Aramis said. “But I go by Aramis.” He set the end of the case on the floor and leaned his elbow on it. “I’m to be working with you gentlemen?”

Athos was trying to formulate the appropriate response when the door to Treville’s office banged open and he yelled, “You three get in here! _Now!_ ”

They turned as one. Constance looked up then at the three of them, and something felt as though it had _finally_ settled into place.

 

“He’s got decent form,” Porthos said quietly to Athos as they watched Aramis keep his feet on the practice mat even as another probationary Musketeer – a man by the name of Marsac – tried to sweep his legs out from under him. 

“He’s very calculated,” Athos added.

Porthos, and half the loosely assembled Musketeers winced in sympathy when Marsac took an elbow hard to the diaphragm. He stayed upright, though, and managed to get his arm around Aramis’s neck from behind. 

Everyone flailed a little bit when they were first taken in a chokehold. Even Athos still twitched though the countermove was as ingrained in him as breathing. 

Aramis never hesitated. 

He registered the contact and the weight of the hold, and moved fluidly. His foot connected solidly with Marsac’s leg above the knee, and he slapped an open palm to the side of the other man’s head. Marsac hit the mat face-first and stayed down. 

“Wait,” Athos hissed, hand on Porthos’s arm.

Breathing hard, Aramis crept closer and leaned over the downed man. “Marsac?”

It happened in the space of a blink; Aramis hit the mat hard enough to drive the air from his lungs while Marsac stood on shaky legs. 

Porthos shook off Athos’s light hold and dropped to his knees on the mat, one large hand splayed over Aramis’s sternum. “Easy, easy – breathe, Aramis.”

Aramis sucked in the requested breath, eyes wide. 

“In and out. In and out.” He kept his voice soft and smooth. Aramis relaxed, and his breathing came easier. Porthos smoothed his thumb in the dip under Aramis’s breastbone with a murmured, “Good boy.”

The small crowd that had gathered dispersed to other activities as Athos knelt next to Porthos, staring down at Aramis as he continued to lay there and suck in air in a rhythm his body found most comfortable. 

“You had him until you went to check on him,” he said dryly, ignoring Porthos’s glare. 

“Too….nice….” Aramis closed his eyes briefly. He bent his knees and put his feet flat on the mat. “S’….not good.”

“Right,” Porthos said. “In this situation, anyway. Next time might be different.”

He chuckled, then rolled to the side to get up. His legs were wobbly and his lip was split, but he was otherwise in good working condition. 

 

They knew he was a good shot. He had sharp eyes, a steady hand, and even when adrenaline must have been flooding his system his breathing remained deep and even. They knew this.

But it was another thing entirely to actually witness it firsthand.

The situation had gone rapidly south. 

Porthos was down for the count after taking the wrong side of something blunt and heavy to the side of the head. Athos stood over him, gun trained on the leader of the sordid, underground weapons ring, while his other two lackeys had one trained on him and one on Porthos. The only one of them who still had absolutely freedom of movement was Aramis up in the rafter shadows on the catwalk, but he’d dutifully maintained radio silence at Athos’s command once he realized they’d been set up. 

“I think it’s funny,” LePerux said, waving the hand not holding the gun trained on Porthos’s head in a willy-nilly manner. “The Special Investigations and Tactical Response Unit sends in their best team and this is how it ends up. Their best partnership, at any rate,” he added, his expression twisting. 

There was a soft murmur in Athos’s left ear, and he shuddered out the reflex to twist for the shadows above them to find Aramis. The words didn’t sound English, but it wasn’t the French he had grown up speaking and listening to, either. The sound cut off abruptly at the end. 

“It’s hilarious, really.” LePerux took a step closer to Porthos; Athos growled through his back teeth and shifted his body enough to cover it and still keep an eye on the two lackeys. 

“Put down your weapon and get on your knees, hands behind your head,” Athos said with a calm he didn’t feel. What the hell was Aramis waiting for? An engraved invitation?

“Or what?” he screeched. “You’ll shoot me? Then they’ll shoot you. In the end you’re dead either way.”

Still no shot came from above. 

Every muscle in Athos’s already tense body went even stiffer when he realized Aramis was waiting for the go ahead. He was waiting for Athos to direct him. There were three targets, and he needed to know which, according to his leader, was his first. 

He swallowed with difficulty, and hoped Aramis was as good a shot in a real situation as he was on the training ground. “Put down your weapon and get on your knees, or we start killing your men.”

LePerux laughed. “We? You and what army?”

Lackey number one, the closest to being able to get in Athos’s blindside, dropped to the hard concrete in a spray of blood. LePerux’s mouth gaped; Porthos blinked is eyes silently up at Athos from the floor. 

“That one,” Athos said dryly. “As our initial agreement had been to meet only with you to discuss the sale of illegal weapons, we were intent on arresting only you. However, we have space enough to bring him along, too,” he motioned to lackey number two who’s gun was pointed to the floor and looking frantically between LePerux and Athos with the expression of a man who knew the probability of death was very high. “If you, however, don’t comply with our simple request to get on your knees and toss the weapon away, it won’t matter whether we have space for your friend because he won’t need it as he’ll make the trip in a body bag.”

Porthos pushed himself upright and startled the hell out of everyone except Athos to speak to lackey number two. “I’d start trying to reason with him, buddy. You’re the one who’s going to suffer for it.”

Lackey Number Two sank to his knees and pitched his gun halfway across the warehouse floor, voice apparently lodged somewhere in his throat. 

With the man running rapidly out of ideas and ways out of the situation, Athos knew he’d tried one last stupid effort. Porthos knew it, and he was damn sure Aramis could see it coming a mile off. Athos inched forward and retrained his own weapon on the man on his knees. If Aramis was looking at the tableau through his scope he would have caught the movement, and shifted to cover Porthos, his crosshairs on LePerux. 

At least, Athos hoped that was the case. 

LePerux took one look between Athos, Porthos, and his own man, seemed to gather himself for an instant, and then took off for the door, firing a shot into the darkness above them where he thought the shots might have come from.

The sound of a hard breath being sucked in echoed through their earpieces but Athos didn’t know who had done it. He couldn’t deny he’d inhaled sharply when LePerux fired at something none of them could see but all knew was hidden.

Aramis’s rifle sounded again; LePerux went down hard, bleeding on the concrete from a large caliber round to the shoulder. Leaving Porthos was Lackey Number Two, Athos jogged over and kicked the discarded weapon away. 

Short minutes later with both men handcuffed, back up and an ambulance on the way, Athos had Porthos tip his head down a bit. His curls were matted with blood on the one side, though it didn’t seem to be bleeding still. 

“How’s his head?” Aramis asked, melting out of the shadows with his rifle over his shoulder. He ignored the way LePerux shrank from him as he made his way over to Athos and Porthos. 

Athos held his hand out for the rifle, eyebrows raising when Aramis chose to set it carefully on the floor instead. 

“Still attached,” Porthos muttered, “or it wouldn’t hurt.”

The other two chuckled, the sound mingling with the approaching sirens.

“Tip your head a bit, I’m not that tall,” Aramis said. His fingers were swift but gentle in parting Porthos’s hair and probing the edges of the small cut. “Won’t even need stitches.” He wiped his bloody fingers on Porthos’s shirt before patting the big man’s cheek gently.

Porthos grabbed the fingers, gripping them tightly enough for the tips to turn white, though Aramis didn’t so much as grimace. Athos snorted in amusement. 

“An EMT still needs to look you over,” Athos said. “Hard head or not.”

Smiling, Aramis went to retrieve his rifle. He bent to pick it up and froze, his face paling. 

“Aramis?”

Athos got there first, catching Aramis as he stumbled trying to right himself. He eased the younger man to the floor and began running his hands briskly over his torso, searching for anything out of the ordinary. His hand came away tacky with blood when he touched Aramis’s left side. 

With Porthos directing the additional chaos around them that always accompanied the aftermath of a bust, Athos was free to work on the butons of Aramis’s black shirt. He pushed it off the left shoulder, and gently pulled up the bottom of the black v-neck underneath. 

“Arm up,” he said; Aramis complied by draping it over Athos’s shoulder and promptly buried his face in the crook of his own elbow. 

There was a literal chunk of flesh missing in the strip of skin between the bottom of Aramis’s ribcage and the top of his hips. It was bleeding like a motherfucker, and Athos silently berated himself for not noticing the darkened cloth earlier. 

“Dark wash jeans and black shirts,” Porthos said softly in Athos’s ear as he rested his hands on his thighs in order to get a better look at the ugly wound. “You don’t have x-ray vision.”

“That would be awkward,” Aramis muttered into his own skin. “Stitches?”

“There’s not really anything there for them to stitch together, ‘Mis.” Two heads turned immediately to stare at him for the impromptu nickname; Porthos colored slightly. “Seriously. There’s just – it’s a gap.”

Aramis huffed out a dry laugh, wincing as Athos clamped a too-tight grip over the bullet wound in question. He rested his ear on his arm, breathing through his mouth. 

“Awake, Aramis,” Athos said. He shrugged his shoulder. “I need you to stay awake.”

“Yessir.”

“Don’t call me sir.” He glanced up; Porthos had been waylaid but not one but three EMTs and was motioning toward them, intent on following while one of the medical professionals attempting to corral him in the direction of the door toward an ambulance. 

“Treville didn’t tell us much about you,” he said. “Did you come to us from the army?”

“Toronto SRU,” Aramis said. “I was Sierra One for Team Two.” He glared at Athos who once again jostled him enough to make him open his eyes. “It was – I dropped out of St. Peter’s Seminary and moved to Toronto. Went through the training program for the SRU, and became a sniper.” He made an abortive move for Athos when the EMT forced him to move. 

Athos knelt on Aramis’s other side, still close enough to touch.

“Scale of one to ten how’s your pain?” the EMT asked as he started an IV in Aramis’s arm. The gurney was coming, from the sound of it.

“Four,” Aramis grunted, teeth gritted as more pressure was applied to his side. “How’s Porthos?”

“The big man with a head like granite?”

“John,” Athos said warningly. He and Porthos had had plenty of experience with this particular set of EMTs but Aramis hadn’t been there long enough to know he was joking. 

“He’s fine, not even a concussion.” He pushed something into the port attached the IV bag. “We have a few minutes before you go floating off to La-La Land. Can you stand to get on the gurney or do we need to lift you?”

“Stand.”

Athos’s respect for Aramis – already fairly high – went higher. If he stayed with them he’d fit like there had been a hole for him. 

“Let us do the work, okay? And let me know if you’re going to hurl.” John looked up when a shadow fell over him and promptly handed the IV bag to Porthos. “Hold this.” He crouched, kept one hand over Aramis’s side and grasped his arm with the other. Athos did the same. “On my count.”

Athos and John got him upright; Aramis sagged until his knees remembered to take his weight. By the time he was flat on his back on the gurney and being wheeled toward the door, he was grinning stupidly at the ceiling, his eyes dilated. He looked back and forth between Porthos and Athos, muttering in what Athos now recognized as Spanish. 

He reached for Porthos, latching on to his free hand with surprising strength. It was only after Aramis had been loaded in an ambulance – still with a death-grip on Porthos – that he remembered Aramis’s rifle was still on the floor in the warehouse. The same rifle he wasn’t initially going to let Athos hold in order to check on Porthos’s head. 

The weapon itself didn’t seem anything special. Still, it was Aramis’s, and he valued it, so it felt only natural for Athos to value it as well. He did the same thing with Porthos’s favorite books, most of which were children’s stories from the house of his favorite foster mother. She’d let him keep them, and he’d made sure to hold onto them ever since. They sat on a shelf in the tiny living room at Porthos’s equally small apartment, next to portrait of his foster mother and a photograph of him and Athos after their first successful case together.

They would do another such photograph in order to commemorate Aramis’s first with them, too. 

He thumbed on the safety, made sure the weapon was unloaded, and set off for his car. He had a hospital waiting room to be at. 

 

“And I _like_ camping, too,” Aramis said, grunting Porthos’s weight. He was as heavy, if not heavier, than he looked. The man was solid muscle, and after the first failed attempt to get Porthos over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry he settled for having him ride piggy-back instead. 

It worked marginally better.

“It’s not bad when there’s not a bunch of meth lunatics behind you,” Porthos muttered in his ear. 

Aramis shifted his grip on a thigh and nearly sent them careening into a tree. 

His probationary period had ended six months prior, and it was the start of his second year as a Musketeer. He was slowly growing to love Quebec in more ways than he’d liked both Toronto and his home city of Montreal, and his friendship with Athos and Porthos had only deepened.

Well, maybe calling the thing between himself and Porthos _friendship_ wasn’t totally correct. 

He wasn’t in a hurry to vault back into the committed relationship saddle after the disaster that had been his failed engagement at age eighteen. Instead he’d gone to college, gotten a degree in theology, and flirted with damn near everyone, man or woman. He’d slept with a good amount of them, too, but it hadn’t been anything he’d wanted to continue seriously. 

And he hadn’t met anyone he would have been proud to take home to his mother and sisters, either. Until he met Porthos and Athos.

Aramis stepped carefully over a fallen log; Porthos tightened his arms and legs in the off-chance they’d hit the ground. 

“Do we have cell service yet?” Aramis asked, shuffling along and pressing Porthos back against a tree. Between the weight in front of him and the bark behind him he wasn’t going anywhere, and Aramis took the opportunity to stretch his legs a little. 

“I’d look but my ass is mashed against a pine tree,” he said dryly. “I thought you could squat twice your body weight?”

“I can.” He rested his head against Porthos’s chest. “But I’m not squatting twice my body weight. I’m carrying _more_ than my body weight through uneven terrain in the middle of the woods. Treville hasn’t managed to make a workout to cover this yet.”

Porthos didn’t know what to say about _that_ , though he had the sneaking suspicion Aramis had called him fat in a very roundabout way, and settled for beating what had rapidly become a dead horse between them. “You’re the one who wanted to go for a hike.”

“I thought you had a map!” Aramis reached back and pinched what little excess Porthos had over his ribs. “Or at least a sense of a direction!”

A big hand clamped over his mouth; Aramis petulantly licked the dirty palm in hopes it would be removed. Porthos didn’t flinch, though he made a soft sound of disgust deep in his throat. 

“Keep your voice down, ‘Mis,” he said, warm breath ghosting over Aramis’s ear. “Leaves can only muffle so much.”

The deep voice send a shiver down his spine, and Aramis knew he was in over his head when the idea of Porthos whispering other things sent a flash of him through him to curl low in his belly. 

Now, however, was not the time to explore that further.

Porthos’s hand moved away from his mouth and downt he column of his throat to splay palm-down over his heart. Aramis had no doubt he could feel how fast and hard it thumped.

The hand rubbed circles over his sternum as Porthos asked quietly, “Got your breath back?”

 _No_. “Yeah. How’s your leg?”

“Still broken.” He looped his other arm over Aramis’s other shoulder and curled his good leg more securely around his torso. “Down to a dull throb.”

“Good.” Aramis staggered forward onto the crudely marked path again, bowing forward until he found his balance again. He resisted the urge to sit in the invisible chair, like he’d been taught when he was going to lose his balance on his ice skates, knowing gravity was a bitch and he’d put them both on the ground.

They started forward again; Porthos dug his phone out of his back pocket, glad it was still workable even if the screen was cracked and spiderwebbed. He squinted, then laughed quietly. 

“How much?”

“A bar.” He hoped it was enough, and tapped Athos’s number. It took a few tries, but it finally started to dial. 

Athos picked up on the third ring with a wry, _”I thought you were camping.”_

“We were until we found a meth lab in a trailer. Now we have a bit of a problem.”

There was dead silence on the other end of the line.

“What did he say?” Aramis hissed.

“Nothing yet.” He pressed he phone closer to his ear. “Athos? Can you hear me?”

_”You found a **meth lab** while camping?”_

“We’re good Musketeers like that?” Porthos said, trying for levity. Aramis snorted. 

_”Where are you?”_

“That’s – where are we?” he in turned asked Aramis. 

“Damned if I know,” Aramis said. “We left the map back with the meth lab. Did you tell him about your broken leg?” he added, loud enough for Athos to hear on the other end of the connection.

 _”You have – what – you **broke your leg?**_ ”

Porthos tugged hard on Aramis’s ear in retaliation. “It’s not too broken.”

Stereo effect had a whole new meaning as Aramis and Athos said together with unerring accuracy, “It’s _still_ a broken leg!”

Bark flew from a tree to their right followed shortly by the delayed roll of a shotgun discharge. 

Aramis hitched Porthos higher on his back and took off, zig-zagging his way through the trees and underbrush while humming the “Dueling Banjos” bit from _Deliverance_. It seemed oddly appropriate, in a way, second only to the _Benny Hill_ theme that began blaring from his back pocket. Porthos had evidently dropped his phone in the recent commotion, and Athos was probably frantically trying to connect with one of them.

He held Porthos with one hand, flailed the other back to his phone – more intact from his journey down the hill than Porthos’s unexpected one, as he’d remembered to tuck and roll only a little too late – and bounced the pair of them off a pine tree big enough to have been there undisturbed for at least a decade. 

Porthos took the offered electronic and punched the accept button with his thumb. “We’re a little busy, Athos, talk fast.”

 _”Constance is working with the police in order to triangulate Aramis’s phone GPS. Stay on the line._ That was Athos – calm, cool, and completely collected even when he was in Quebec proper and the rest of his team was running from backwoods chemists. 

“You could – talk to him – you know,” Aramis huffed. Dirt kicked up next to his foot and he veered in the other direction; Porthos yelled at the abrupt change of direction, his broken leg bouncing off Aramis’s ribcage. 

_”Porthos!”_ Athos yelled through the phone.

“Fine!” He rested his forehead against Aramis’s sweaty hair. 

_”We found you. You’re on speaker phone in the office._ ”

He pressed a button, turning up the volume with his thumb and clutching his phone in his hand so the speaker was up and more or less pointed at Aramis’s fuzzy chin. His moustache and beard were growing back after he’d had to cut them for one of their more recent operations. Porthos informed him every day he looked damn weird mostly clean-shaven. 

“You’re on speaker with us, too!”

“This counts as my next fitness test!” Aramis yelled; another ricochet forced him the opposite direction, and he couldn’t help but feel like he was being herded.

“That’s the second time you’ve called me fat today, asshole.”

 _”Gentlemen!”_ Treville’s voice bellowed through the open connection. _”Focus. Aramis, there’s a park station about two miles southwest of your current location. Take the next left.”_

“My left or your left?” Aramis sucked in a breath and screamed it out along with Porthos when something sliced through his left shoulder. 

There was a myriad of yelling from the phone; Aramis’s world went gut-churningly wavy for a few seconds. He stayed on his feet through sheer willpower, well aware that if he went down they were utterly screwed and probably dead. As it was, he risked a glance at what he’d been hit with and was utterly stupefied to see an arrowhead sticking out of his flesh. He pulled his shoulder forward; Porthos thumped him hard on the chest with his own phone.

 _”Left, Aramis! Left!”_ It was both Treville and Athos; Aramis’s finely tuned sense of following orders had him veering left. His balance was precarious, and Porthos was still conscious because someone had to hold the phone.

 _”Constance has park and local police standing by at the station,”_ Athos said, the tenseness in his voice betraying his anxiety. 

“How much further?” Porthos would have had to have been blind to not notice Aramis was struggling. His chest heaved, and he was trembling from head to toe. The only thing keeping him going was the knowledge he alone was the only one capable of getting them to safety. 

And when he got there he was going to fall down and sleep for a week, other responsibilities be damned.

 _”A mile and a half,”_ Athos said.

Aramis muttered something decidedly unflattering in Spanish and picked up the pace. The quicker he got there, the quicker he’d get Porthos some medical attention, and the sooner he could _rest._

 

They careened through the last of the underbrush like men possessed, a great, lopsided creature that happened to be bellowing Lady Gaga as a cadence for Aramis to run to. The sight of at least a dozen guns brought to bear on them didn’t phase them, though Aramis was hoping to at least see a familiar face or two in the crowd. 

Aramis also didn’t think about the fact that he was probably over his monthly minutes limit and his phone bill was going to be astronomical. Also, Athos would probably never want to hear another Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Mumford and Sons, and Phillip Phillips song ever again. The bright side was everyone had confirmed what they already suspected – Porthos couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.

The proprietors of the meth lab, the idiots, followed them right into the waiting arms of their law enforcement breathren. 

Shaking like a newborn kitten, Aramis stood on knees that threatened to buckle at any moment to watch them get arrested. His breathing was ragged, and if Porthos didn’t already know he didn’t have asthma, he might have been worried Aramis would stop breathing altogether. 

He’d reached the tipping point; he either sat down soon or his body would decide for him and dump the pair of them wherever. 

“Agents?”

They looked together at the young woman to their left. She motioned behind her to a gurney. Aramis thought briefly of calling it heaven; Porthos brushed his knuckles against Aramis’s chest. 

Sitting was tricky. Aramis’s muscles didn’t want to be helpful, Porthos still had a broken leg, and they let out twin, bone-deep sighs of relief once they were settled. Porthos leaned back cautiously, the padding feeling like the softest down he’d never slept on. 

From the minute movement of Aramis’s cheek against his, Porthos knew he was still awake. How was a total fucking mystery, and he dropped the phone on the gurney between Aramis’s shaking thighs in order to wrap his arm more snugly across his chest. 

“Let go, Aramis,” he whispered as they were loaded in the back of the ambulance and then set upon by another set of EMTs like wolves to a carcass. 

The metaphor might not have been very flattering, but it fit, in a way. And he didn’t have Aramis’s way with words, either.

Aramis, bless him, rested his head heavily on Porthos’s good shoulder and went still. The hand Porthos still had on his chest ensured he was alive, and Porthos looked at the ceiling of the ambulance. Aramis had gotten them this far, the least he could do was see them the rest of the way home.

 

Aramis woke up fourteen hours later with most of his lower body cramping violently. He stuffed his fist in his mouth to muffle the scream, acutely aware Porthos was in the next hospital bed and – judging from the darkness of the room save for the low light on above his bed – most likely asleep. 

“Breathe, Aramis,” Athos commanded softly, the fingers of one hand sliding through Aramis’s unruly hair while the other pressed the call button for the nurse. “You have to breathe.”

No he didn’t. Breathing meant more pain and another chance to scream. 

“In and out, Aramis. In and out.” Athos was relentless; he smiled thinly when Aramis did as he was told and sucked in a gulp of air around his knuckles. He keened it out immediately after, though that didn’t matter. “Again, Aramis. In and out.”

They kept up the strange rhythm until the nurses appeared, one trailing after the other with a prepackaged syringe in hand. 

Athos shifted closer to the bed, unwilling to go further away, and was only half-surprised when Aramis reached out to snare a fistful of his jacket to ground himself. 

“Rene? Can you wiggle your toes for me?” one of the nurses said, throwing back the blanket to reveal his bare feet. 

He was in so much pain he was crying, sobbing around his hand where it was still pressed against his teeth. Until Athos took him gently but firmly around the wrist and tugged it away with a soft, “You don’t need to make yourself bleed.”

“Rene? I need you to at least try.”

Aramis gulped in air only to choke on it. The message was finally relayed from his brain to his feet because his toes curled; the other nurse injected something into his IV line and everything south of his waist smoothed out. He’d have been half-terrified it hadn’t felt so damn good.

He sat on the edge of Aramis’s bed, still running his fingers over his scalp in what he hoped was a soothing manner. He hummed, snatches of songs he’d heard on the radio rather than the half of Aramis’s running playlist he’d been accidentally privy to. 

It worked; Aramis’s eyes drooped. 

“Better?” Athos asked softly. 

Aramis relaxed. His grip against Athos’s jacket didn’t lessen, and Athos hadn’t expected it to. Aramis was tactile. He, himself, wasn’t.

 _Until these two jackasses came in,_ he thought with a wry twist of his mouth. His breath caught at the trust in Aramis’s dark eyes, barely visible in the low light but there nonetheless. He hadn’t seen such a look since he’d taken a bullet in the shoulder for Porthos during the early days of their present working relationship. 

Porthos had been pissed, too, but that had been neither here nor there.

“It’s better if you sleep,” Athos said. “Close – no, don’t fight me on this – close your eyes.” He waited until Aramis followed the simple directions. “You’re safe. Porthos is safe. You busted a meth lab, and you’re safe now. _Sleep._ ”

Athos stayed where he was until he was sure Aramis was out again. He looked between the two beds again and wondered, not for the first time, what Treville had been thinking.

 

When Athos crawled into the bottle on the anniversary of his ex-wife’s conviction and sentence of 25 to life, Aramis crawled in there with him. Athos can’t remember much of the night, but he knew instinctively that both Porthos and Aramis were there. Aramis had even gone so far as to crawl in bed with him for some reason, and the only way Athos knew this was because he’d accidentally kicked the other man in the shin the next day in his hurry to get to the bathroom to throw up. 

The hangover was atrocious, and the three of them had circles under their eyes dark enough to look like bruises. Treville didn’t ask any questions, Athos didn’t offer any explanations, and business went about as usual. 

And if Aramis made sure there were a few painkillers next to Athos’s cup of espresso roast on the table of the conference room they’d commandeered as theirs, well, it was nobody else’s business. 

The idea of keeping Athos busy enough so he _wouldn’t_ drown himself in hard liquor was made with the best of intentions. The execution was a bit lacking.

While Aramis had spent part of his childhood and adolescence playing competitive hockey and could skate literal circles around others, Athos and Porthos didn’t share the same sentiments. Porthos could at least go forward, if hesitantly and very close to the wall. 

Athos was a whole ‘nother ball of wax.

Aramis held his hands out. “Trust me.”

Porthos shuffled by them at a snail’s pace, gaining confidence and muttering the Spanish swearwords Aramis had taught him the last time they were at The Wren each time he thought his feet were going to go out from under him. 

“Athos,” Aramis said, waiting for the other man to meet his eyes. He looked beyond the glare and saw what was making Athos keep him at arm’s length – a vulnerability and a fear of being betrayed again. 

He’d never had the urge to harm a woman before but he’d be a damned liar if he said he didn’t want to take a literal pound of flesh from Ann de la Fere. 

“I won’t let you fall,” he said slowly. “Athos, I promise I will not let you fall.”

“What if you can’t keep that promise?” Athos’s fingers twitched. “What if – what if – “ He either couldn’t find the words or couldn’t get them past the lump in his throat. 

“Then I’ll pick you up.” He jerked his head toward Porthos, who had just been passed by a group of giggling teenage girls. “ _We’ll_ pick you up.” He smiled gently. “Trust us.”

He knew what he was asking. Athos knew, too. 

“My ass hits this ice and you’re doing my paperwork for a month,” Athos said, gripping Aramis’s fingers hard enough to bruise. 

“Deal.” Aramis shifted his weight, gliding backward and pulling Athos forward with him.

 

Treville took in the sight before him with his hands on his hips. The fire brigade was still working on the smoldering remains of half the building, the proverbial bad guys were in custody and sporting a myriad of bruises, cuts, burns, and the occasional bullet graze. As for the cause of all the excitement, well…

Athos, Porthos, and Aramis sat on the curb. A pair of handcuffs dangled from one of his wrists – he’d already reset the dislocated thumb he’d needed to get his hands free in the first place, part of the whole ruse, he assumed – while Athos rested against Porthos’s sturdy bulk, legs splayed out in front of him. Porthos rested his forearms on his bent knees and laughed at something Aramis muttered in his ear. 

“Gentlemen.”

Three heads turned as one. If Treville hadn’t known them as well as he did he would have assumed the innocence plastered across their faces was genuine. He had mixed feelings about asking the origins of Porthos and Aramis’s matching black eyes, and the bruising – with distinct finger marks – around Athos’s neck suggested he’d been choked recently. 

There was a faint trembling sound; the half of the building that had been spared by the fire collapsed inward with a groan. 

Treville ran a hand down his face and knew putting Athos, Porthos, and Aramis on the same team had been both the best and worst decision of his career. He wondered briefly if he would come to regret it.

“Told you it wouldn’t stay up,” Porthos said, holding out his hand. Aramis pulled a crinkled bill from his pocket and slapped it into the upturned palm, his handcuff bouncing jauntily. 

No, he realized, he wasn’t going to live long enough _to_ regret it. The three of them would put him in an early grave.

“Where’s the key to the handcuffs?” Treville finally asked.

Porthos jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the remains of the warehouse behind him. “Back there somewhere. Athos dropped it on the floor.”

“I was being strangled,” he protested. “I had more important things to deal with than Aramis handcuffed to a pipe.”

“Thank you, Athos, your concern is touching,” Aramis said dryly, only a hint of amusement showing in his eyes. 

“I was a little more concerned with breathing at the time.” Athos reached out Porthos’s bulk and punched Aramis in the arm. 

“Children,” Porthos chided, gripping the pair of them by the scruff of their shirts. “Behave.”

“He started it,” Aramis muttered.

“Did not.”

“Did to.”

“Gentlemen!” Treville roared, his headache now an incessant pounding behind his eyeballs. “I don’t care who started it, I’m finishing it!”

The last time most of them had heard that line had been during their childhood. They went stock still, staring wide-eyed at Treville. 

“I do _not_ want to know what happened. Not tonight.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “What you will do is get yourselves some medical attention, go home, and _not_ show your faces around the garrison for three days.”

“Vacation starts now?” Aramis said with badly disguised glee.

It felt like rewarding bad behavior. “Yes. Go.” He made shooing motions with his free hand; they scrambled to their feet, arms hooked around shoulders. It should have been awkward with the bit of height difference between the three of them, but they managed. 

He surveyed the property damage in front of him, and his headache increased tenfold. Yes, there as no doubt the three of them were going to be the end of him. But what a glorious ride it would be to get there.


	3. Days Like These

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Athos stood in the hallway, a stack of papers under his arm and his eyebrows nearly to his hairline._
> 
> _"Bad day," Porthos said by way of an explanation. "Woke up screaming."_
> 
>  
> 
> There are days when Aramis lives more in the past than in the present.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had originally intended to do a sort of OT4-family-brotherhood sick fic, but my brain was like, "Let's give Aramis a shittastic day where he reverts back to how he was after the Savoy incident."
> 
> So there's this. 
> 
> I will - eventually - write the AU version of the massacre and Porthos and Athos coming for Aramis in the midst of chaos. Then I will most likely write the AU version of "The Good Soldier." I will spend most of that writing time probably bawling. 
> 
> Anyway. I wanted the version of Aramis that's reliving those awful days to be really different from happy-go-lucky Aramis that we see all the time. Hopefully he's still in character.
> 
> Any mistakes you find feel free to point them out. 
> 
> I adore you all, just for the record. Ya'll rock.

Porthos had come to realize Aramis, like Athos, had his good days and his bad days. On the bright side, unlike Athos, Aramis’s good days vastly outnumbered his bad ones. On the not-so-bright side, Aramis’s bad days were really fucking awful.

He knew it was going to be one of those days when he walked into the conference room Team One had commandeered as their own to find Aramis with his back to the corner, chair positioned in such a way to simultaneously see both the windows and the door. His left leg was doing the jackhammer routine against the floor until he realized what he was doing. Then he would trace nonsense patterns onto his jean-clad thigh with his fingertips until that wasn’t enough and he went back to jiggling his leg. 

“Pick a direction, would you,” d’Artagnan muttered, slipping between Porthos and the wall with his cup of coffee. 

Heading toward Aramis.

Porthos reached out and unsubtly tugged on d’Artagnan’s elbow. “Not – go the other way.”

“Huh?”

He took advantage of the fact that Aramis wasn’t tracking anything outside his little bubble of space. 

“Go _that_ way,” he said. He gave d’Artagnan a little shove in the right direction – away from Aramis – and was very glad when the younger man got the unspoken hint to leave more than a few chairs between him and Aramis. 

Aramis didn’t notice. Porthos was quite sure the building could have collapsed and he wouldn’t have cared.

Satisfied d’Artagnan wouldn’t inadvertently do anything to shove Aramis deeper into a headspace he couldn’t escape for the day, Porthos quietly retreated from the room. Athos stood in the hallway with a stack of papers under his arm and his eyebrows near his hairline. 

“Bad day,” Porthos said by way of an explanation. “Woke up screaming.”

“No rifle work.” Athos peeked around the larger man. Aramis was engrossed in studying the tabletop, though he had no doubt if anyone were to enter his airspace the result would be unpredictable and immediate. 

Once and only once had Athos attempted to touch him to get his attention and he’d needed a trip to the ER to reset three of the fingers on his right hand afterward. 

“Rather have him screamin’ than fightin’,” Porthos muttered. Explaining his black eye to both Athos and Treville had been incredibly awkward, and it was only the fact that Aramis was drowning in guilt that really told them without words how much of an accident it was.

Athos made a sound in the back of his throat Porthos knew meant he didn’t know what to say. 

d’Artagnan was clearly curious why Porthos and Athos were giving Aramis such a wide berth. They spent the morning making sure they had his attention before speaking or wandering too close to him. d’Artagnan had meant to clap him on the shoulder and Aramis had flinched violently enough to nearly fall from his chair. 

“I’m sorry,” Aramis muttered through clenched teeth. He wouldn’t look at d’Artagnan. 

“Not your fault, ‘Mis,” Porthos said in a such a way d’Artagnan knew it wasn’t the first time this whole scenario had happened. “Still not your fault.”

Aramis finally peeled his eyes off the tabletop to look between the three of them; d’Artagnan was still a little clueless but something in Athos and Porthos’s chests eased. He sucked in a deep breath, and made an abortive move toward the right side of his forehead by his hairline. 

“We’re dealing with tainted heroine, gentlemen,” Athos said. “And a dealer who thinks he can get away with murder.”

 

Aramis paced between the kitchen and the front hallway in Athos’s apartment. d’Artagnan sat on the couch next to Porthos; Athos kept one eye on dinner and the other on Aramis as he checked the locks for the nth time. He even tugged on the door to make sure it wouldn’t open and went back to his pacing. 

“What is he doing?” d’Artagnan whispered.

“Exorcising his demons.” Porthos crossed his arms over his chest. 

Dumas, Athos’s black cat, wandered from the bedroom to the living room to investigate. Aramis stopped dead and stared at the furball down. His head tilted to the side and he said, barely audible, “Black and glossy. Like fur.” He turned, fingers twisting together nervously in front of him, to look at Athos. “Dark.”

“Like sin,” Athos said quietly. 

Aramis clawed at the neck of his shirt for the gold chain with his crucifix. “Sin can be washed. Can be cleansed, if you confess to it. You won’t let me,” he said to Porthos, eyes wide and watery. “You won’t let me confess this sin.”

“There’s nothing for _you_ to confess, Aramis,” Porthos said, tone gentle. “Or we would have gladly heard it years ago.”

“How do you deal with it?”

Athos had never thought of Aramis as childlike. He was young, true – not as young as d’Artagnan, and damn sure nowhere near as green – but he’d seen enough to take the shine out of the world. He’d been in the SRU, he’d transferred to the Musketeers, and he’d been caught up in the worst training accident Canadian law enforcement as a whole had ever seen. Twenty dead, one missing, and Aramis in the middle of the carnage with a head wound that had scared the fuck out of Porthos when they finally managed to get to him in the hospital. 

But in that moment, as he looked at Athos like Aramis needed _him_ of all people to explain this insanity, he could see Thomas pleading with his older brother to make sense of a world gone mad. 

He shut the stove off and said nothing. It had been years and he’d still not found an answer to Aramis’s question. He figured at that point he might never. 

 

“Guest bedroom?” d’Artagnan asked, half expecting another door to appear out of nowhere and contain a bed. He liked his team – loved them like brothers – and he’d never been opposed to sleepovers, but this…this might be pushing it. 

“I get the outside,” Athos muttered on his way by. 

He didn’t know how exactly it happened, but the lights were off and he was sharing the same pillow with a distinctly wide-eyed Aramis. Porthos was pressed against Aramis’s back, and Athos was a warm weight along d’Artagnan’s side, his back to the door and where he could, conceivably, keep an eye on all of them.

Aramis reached out in the semi-darkness, the streetlight shining through the window enough to see well enough by. He ran his fingertips, callused from years of gun use, over d’Artagnan’s forehead, nose, and cheekbones. 

“d’Art?” he breathed.

The entire room seemed to hold its breath.

“Yeah, Aramis. Just me.” d’Artagnan gripped the trembling fingers centimeters from his nose and squeezed gently. 

“This is real?”

“Real as can be.”

Aramis let out a ragged sigh as the tension leaked out of his shoulders and closed his eyes.


	4. The Rundown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He’d realized that morning at the Garrison what he’d been trying so hard to deny for so long: he was madly, deeply, and truly in love with his best friend in a way that went so far beyond platonic and brotherly that it might as well have been sitting comfortably in Vancouver._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Or: Aramis realizes he's in love with Porthos, Athos winds up in the middle, and Porthos is the one with the most sense out of the three of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The love of all you have for this AU is astounding and so humbling, and it's just awesome. So thank you, first and foremost, so much. 
> 
> I apparently have a thing for Angst (with a capital A). And UST. So you get both. Also in this world Aramis has sisters. They have quite possibly stolen the show in this chapter? 
> 
> This is another one of those where I started off with one idea and then it devolved in the middle and Aramis took oven and Athos wanted a cast, and...I seriously don't even know. I think I say that a lot. 
> 
> If anybody is wildly OOC, or you find a typo, or something just doesn't _work_ let me know. Hasn't been beta'd, and if you recognize it, I don't own it.

There were those in their unit who were quicker to anger than others. Aramis could name more than a few off the top of his head. His good friend Marsac, God grant him peace wherever he was and whatever he was doing, had had a short fuse. As for the two he spent most of his time with, well, Porthos’s temper was fearsome once he got riled enough to let go of most of his restraint, and Athos existed in a perma-grump state where, some days, it didn’t take much to make him pissy. 

Still, the one thing to make _any_ Musketeer twitch with suppressed rage was calling he or she a coward. 

The Red Guard used it to their advantage whenever they could in The Wren. Treville had taken the three of them in particular to task after an unfortunate incident involving copious amounts of whiskey the destruction of some barroom furniture. 

It was also the reason The Wren no longer had a pool table, but that was neither here nor there. 

In any other circumstances being called a coward would have sparked something flinty within Aramis’s chest. In his current situation – watching through the scope on his rifle as Porthos, undercover as a regular street thug attempted to broker a deal for stolen AK-47’s so they could arrest the dealer – he was perfectly fine with the c-word. The reason he was perfectly fine with it? 

He’d realized that morning at the Garrison what he’d been trying so hard to deny for so long: he was madly, deeply, and truly in love with his best friend in a way that went so far beyond platonic and brotherly that it might as well have been sitting comfortably in Vancouver. 

Years of training and the knowledge that Porthos could take very good care of himself were the only things keeping his breathing even and his hands from shaking. He could practically hear Ed’s1 voice in his ear telling him if he was this compromised he shouldn’t be behind the scope in case things got hairy, but there was nowhere else he’d rather be. The only person he trusted to watch Porthos’s back as well as he could was Athos, and Athos was doing just that.

Well, Athos was watching Porthos’s back from the front of the building dressed like a homeless man amid a pile of tattered blankets and old newspapers. He was _still_ not thrilled to be in such a position. 

“They’re shaking hands,” Aramis whispered. 

_”About fucking time.”_

He smirked. Athos was only that irritated when he felt he wasn’t in full control of the situation. And Porthos by himself with a gun runner about to hand over ear-marked money for a bunch of weapons was guaranteed to get Athos’s dander up. 

“Relax, Athos.” Aramis did a quick search of the alleyway – still no one but the dealer and Porthos. “Just two guys making a highly illegal deal and us freely giving away more money than we all see in a year. NBD.”

_”That’s the last time I let you watch American crime dramas.”_

Aramis grinned; Athos had let go of some of the tension in his voice. The less tightly wound Athos was, the quicker he rolled with whatever punches might unexpectedly come their way.

“But you know how much I love _Rizzoli and Isles_ ,” he said, stifling a chuckle. “At least we didn’t make you watch _Hogan’s Heroes_ again.”

 _”I would have shot you. Someplace annoying and extremely painful.”_ He paused. _“I wouldn’t have regretted it.”_

In the alleyway below the briefcase containing the money Porthos was to give the dealer made an appearance. Aramis trained his crosshairs on the forehead of the other man and said sweetly, “You would have since I would have taken it as explicit permission to plant myself on your coach during my recovery. Dumas would love the extra attention.”

He could see Athos’s eye roll perfectly in his mind’s eye as he said, _”Dumas doesn’t need any extra attention. You and Porthos spoil him beyond rotten.”_

“Athos.” Aramis thumbed the safety off his rifle. “We might have problems.” He ignored Athos’s muttered, _”Of course we have problems – I’m with you two,”_ and more intently on the scene below him. 

The briefcase exchanged hands as a black van rolled to a stop at the end of the alley. His attention swung toward the van; the dealer pulled a handgun.

 _”Backup’s on the way,_ ” Athos said.

Seconds later the alley was filled with the sounds of gunfire. Aramis had to trust Porthos could take care of himself, and muttering the Pater Noster, began picking off men in ski masks. The sound of sirens grew steadily closer.

He sighted through the scope again, and removed his finger from the trigger when he found Athos by the van. 

_”All clear.”_

Aramis took off the for the nearest fire escape at a dead run, only checking to see that the safety was on again once he was at the top of the ladder. He slung the rifle unceremoniously over his shoulder and shimmied down. Athos met him at the bottom; Aramis shoved the weapon at him without a word and jogged down the alley to the place he’d last seen Porthos. 

Porthos who was nowhere to be found.

His heart beat wildly against his ribs. The alley was a mess of blood, mud, and other filth, and someone had put a bullet between the dealer’s eyes in the chaos. Still, there was no Porthos, and Aramis was on the verge of losing his carefully controlled breathing.

 _Compromised,_ whispered the voice in the back of his head, eerily reminiscent of his sergeant in Toronto. _You’ve been compromised._

He stopped short as Porthos stepped out from behind a dumpster, his Glock still gripped tightly in the arm dangling loosely by his side. There was blood on his forehead, but he grinned widely when he saw Aramis. 

If Aramis hadn’t already been stupidly in love with him then that alone would have sealed the deal. 

_Compromised,_ the little voice said again, whispering through his conscience. _You’ve been compromised._ And there wasn’t a damn thing he could say to himself to deny it.

 

Aramis sat with his elbows on the conference table and his head in his hands. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and he looked up to see Athos lounging in the doorway wearing his _We have shit to discuss and you’re not going to like it but you’re going to hear it anyway_ look with a manila folder under one arm. The last time he’d seen it had been in those horrible days following his release from the hospital after the incident the reports had labeled Savoy. 

He shuddered reflexively. 

“We need to talk, Aramis,” he said softly. 

“About what?” Two could play this game, if there was even a game to be played. 

Athos shut the door and took a seat across the table from him, hands folded as though he were praying to a God he only half-believed in, the folder lying innocently by his elbow. His eyebrows rose.

Aramis wouldn’t – couldn’t – meet Athos’s eyes. 

“Aramis,” Athos said in such a way Aramis _had_ to look. “What is going on?”

He shrugged. “Don’t have a clue what you mean.”

Snorting, Athos shoved the folder across the table with a curt, “Take a look.”

It was a tone of voice Aramis had learned the hard way not to ignore. He opened it carefully and was greeted with a photograph of a dead man. There was neat, if large, hole under his eye. The picture underneath was another cadaver with a hole in the side of his head. The third was missing most of its throat. 

“I’ve seen dead bodies before,” Aramis said, tone and expression carefully neutral. “Which of our snipers is doing such shoddy work?”

Athos looked him square in the eye and said, “You.”

He jerked. “Excuse me?”

“The casualties from the last mission. And the one before it. Look at the photos on the bottom of the pile.”

Aramis did as he was instructed and found neat rows of head shots – literally. Each dead man had a neat hole either dead center of his forehead or balanced perfectly between his eyes. 

“Those are yours, too,” Athos said. “About two weeks ago they went from that to what you’ve just called ‘shoddy work.’ I want to know why.”

He knew why, too. And he knew it wasn’t worth it to attempt to lie to Athos. Aramis had only tried it once and it hadn’t turned out in his favor. He just…didn’t think he could tell Athos the why of it and still have a job.

It wasn’t a secret he was a shameless flirt. Man or woman, if he was attracted to the person, then they were fair game. Didn’t necessarily mean he’d jump into bed with them even if it looked as though his night was going to end that way. Porthos and Athos had watched him leave pubs and taverns in someone’s campany, and Aramis had always made sure to wear a self-satisfied smirk the next morning. Even if he was the only one who knew he’d gone back to his own bed and woken up alone. 

Even if he was the only one who knew he hadn’t had sex with anyone since he’d been with Marsac. And that had been long before they’d agreed friendship was best about a month before that damned training exercise.

Aramis wanted what he couldn’t have and didn’t see any point in trying to get it. 

“Aramis?” Athos prompted. 

“Had a lot on my mind,” he said with a shrug. It was the truth, too. He had Porthos on his mind. A lot.

“I’ve seen you shoot when you have a lot on your mind.” Athos flipped through the photos and tapped on in particular. “But I’ve never seen you almost miss.”

Despite his inclination not to, Aramis looked at what Athos was pointing to. The cadaver missing a chunk of its throat. The bullet had barely nicked the artery, and Aramis’s knowledge of basic biology told him death had been slow, painful, and panicked – the exact opposite of his own personal creed to, unless he was going for non-lethal, to never make someone suffer needlessly. 

“Fix it,” Athos said. He waited for Aramis to meet his eyes before he added, “Before I have Constance set you up with the Unit headshrink and I have to break in another sniper.” He sat back. “Also, I’m rather fond of you as a friend and this, whatever it is, is eating at you.”

That was damn near too much for him to handle, and he looked away, his breath hitching in his chest. 

With nothing more to say, Athos left Aramis in the conference room with photographs of men dead by his rifle and a lot of thinking to do.

 

He watched the luminous green numbers on the bedside clock tick from 3:32 to 3:33. He was no stranger to bouts of insomnia, though they were usually nightmare driven – dead bodies, trees, and a dusting of snow over unmoving faces – rather than brought forth by his own inability to keep his shit together where his heart was concerned. 

Not to mention the double bed was too damn big. He wasn’t even going to attempt to figure that one out. 

_”It’s going down, I’m yelling timber, you better move, you better dance…_ ” blared from the other side of the alarm clock. Aramis couldn’t help but smile fondly; Porthos had reconfigured his ringtones again.

He fumbled for it and didn’t care he sounded more awake then than he would in the few hours he’d have to get ready to be at the Garrison. “Hello?”

 _”Hey, it’s me,”_ Porthos said. 

Aramis sat upright, his heart kicking doubletime in his chest at the sound of Porthos’s voice. “What’s wrong?”

_”How do – nevermind. My roof collapsed.”_

It took a few seconds for that to correctly process, and he stupidly repeated, “Your _roof_ collapsed?”

 _”Should I say it in French for you to understand? Yes, my fucking roof collapsed.”_ There was more than a touch of hysteria; neither of them chose to comment on it. _”Athos is on his way but we both know he’s shit with tight spaces. I just – I need to get some things out tonight and I need help.”_

“Things? First, are you alright?” He threw back the covers, and held the phone to his ear with his bare shoulder in order to turn the lamp on. The next order of business was to find his pants.

_”I’m fine. It was mostly the roof in the living room that fell in. Thank God I didn’t fall asleep on the couch.”_

Aramis paused with his jeans halfway up his thighs at the chuckle on the other end of the line. “Living – your bookcase.”

Porthos’s voice seemed no louder than a whisper. _”Yeah. The other stuff I can replace but Callie’s books…”_ He trailed off. 

He fastened his belt and grabbed a sweatshirt on his way out of the bedroom, barely noticing it was one Porthos must have left the last time he was at Aramis’s apartment. “Keep Athos someplace wide open. I’m not in the mood to deal with a panic attack this early in the morning.”

The chuckle he received warmed him from the inside out. Outside in the cold he tipped his head back and wished he was back at his mother’s house far enough from Montreal for him to see the stars. He needed to reaffirm that some things in the universe were constant.

 

Aramis responded to Athos’s wordless raised eyebrows at his choice of attire with a raised middle finger. Athos snorted, and Aramis left him there in the street amidst the fire trucks and police cruisers to climb carefully up the outside stairs to get to Porthos’s door. He flashed his badge, the etched fleur-de-lis on the gold shining dully in the floodlights. 

“Hey,” Porthos said from the doorway to the carnage that had been his once-clean living room. “Thanks for coming.”

“Like I’d be anywhere else at – “ he checked his watch. “Four in the morning.”

“Still. I appreciate it.” He smiled tiredly. “I think the shelf pitched forward.”

Porthos didn’t have much he valued from a childhood growing up in foster care. The children’s books from his favorite foster mother – the one to have made the biggest difference in his young life and the woman he credited for his ambition to community college and later join the Musketeers – were his prized possessions.

“Okay.” Aramis pushed his sleeves up and waded into the wreckage. 

An hour and a half later they tramped back down the stairs to where Athos was waiting in the yard. Porthos had the stack of books and a duffle bag filled with clothes.

“Where’s your landlady?” Athos asked, gesturing to the empty garage. 

“In Newfoundland on holiday.” He heaved a sigh. “Hell of a thing to come home to.” He forced a smile, too used to a life of rolling with the punches to stop now. “Any recommendations on hotels?”

Athos opened his mouth but Aramis beat him to it and he said, before his brain had a conscious chance to catch up, “You’re not sleeping in a hotel when you can stay with me.”

They stared openly at him, and for the first time since he’d joined law enforcement to begin with, Aramis blushed hotly under the combined scrutiny. 

“You’re sure?” Porthos asked. “It’s not a big deal – “

“I’m sure,” Aramis said, stifling the urge to punch Athos – hard, and somewhere much more painful than his arm – and willed his cheeks to stop flaming. “You can stay with me.”

It wasn’t a foreign concept between the two of them. There were times when Porthos would sack out on the couch after a night of drinking and movies went too long and they didn’t have to be at work the next morning. Or, even if they had to be at the Garrison too damn bright and early, Aramis would turn the coffee pot on and try not to stare at Porthos sprawled on his couch like he owned it. 

He also desperately tried not to think about what Porthos would look like sprawled out in his bed, and he only marginally succeeded at that one.

“Okay.” Porthos shrugged and offered Aramis the shy half-smile that was always guaranteed to make him melt a little.

Aramis grinned, still not quite sure what he’d done, and unable to stop the voice in his head from whispering, _…and lead us not into temptation…_

 

Athos was waiting for him as Aramis burst into the ER like he had a severed limb he needed reattached. He made a beeline for Athos with a slightly strangled, “Where is he?”

“He’s fine,” Athos said, sidestepping to block Aramis’s path. 

Aramis made a noise of frustration deep in his throat and went to go around Athos only to be blocked again. “Athos – “

“ _Do not_ ,” he growled, “take _that_ tone with _me._ ”

Love – even unrequited – did funny things to the mind. Stubbornness mixed with a healthy dose of fear and a smattering of _I don’t give a fuck **who** you are_ made for a heady cocktail. Coupled with the gamut of feelings Aramis had been dealing with for what felt like _years_ and, well, the result was something not many would ever be privy to witness.

Namely Aramis had two fistfuls of the front Athos’s leather jacket and was too damn far into his personal space for it to be labeled an accident.

“Where. The _fuck_. Is he?” Aramis punctuated each set of words with a slight shake of Athos’s frame; Athos didn’t move much but the intent was clear. 

He was staring so hard at Athos’s blue eyes he saw when it clicked.

“You love him,” Athos whispered, though it sounded like a shout to Aramis’s ringing ears. “You’re in love with him.”

Aramis let go like he’d been burnt, the color draining from his face. Chest heaving, he stared across the foot of space between them, his mind utterly blank. 

“How long?”

“No. I am not having this conversation with you.” He retreated a step.

“How long, Aramis?”

“Fuck off, Athos.” There were lines in the sand and they had been blurred beyond recognition. He could be suspended and he couldn’t bring himself to give a damn. He turned to leave; Athos reached out and grabbed his arm.

Aramis twisted, there was a snap, and Athos’s face went white. He froze for a moment and it was all Athos needed to land one, two quick, hard punches to his face. They broke apart, unaware they had an audience of medical personal and hospital security waiting for the right time to step in. Aramis bolted back the way he came, nearly mowing down a nurse and Athos let him go, broken wrist dangling at his side. 

 

“I’m coming!” Constance called, wrapping her sweater more tightly around her. The incessant knocking continued, and she honestly wondered who had the nerve to be disturbing her past eight on a Thursday. She threw open the door without looking through the peephole as she said, “Don’t you have any manners, you – _Aramis?_ ”

There on her porch looking more like a drowned rat than a respectable Musketeer, was Aramis. He wore no coat, and there was what looked like dried blood on the collar of his mis-buttoned shirt. Hiccupping, he twisted his fingers together in front of him and stared at her through rapidly blackening eyes. 

“I – I didn’t – I didn’t know where else to go,” he said quietly. 

Constance put one hand to her mouth and used the other to tug him inside out of the cold and damp. He was a sorry sight on her rug, and she closed the door behind him as quietly as she could. Aramis still flinched, and she took him by the hand to the fire in the living room. He stayed where she positioned him, and she hated this quiet, pliant version of him. 

“You did the right thing coming here,” she said, reaching up and pushing his damp hair off his forehead. Her fingers brushed the scar by his hairline; he shuddered. “I’ll put the kettle back on, you stay here and get warm.”

She bustled into the kitchen and managed to get the stove relit, and the kettle on before she realized her hands were shaking. Where had he come from in such a state? Had he been fighting? Did the others know where he was? Should she call someone?

The kettle screamed. She poured the boiling water into the teapot and let it steep. With a mug in hand she returned to the living room, grateful to find him where she’d put him. Gratitude turned to uneasiness at the hollow look in his eye, and she had to wrap his hands around the mug to make sure he wouldn’t drop it. 

“Drink, Aramis,” she said firmly. “There’s a good lad.”

He flinched again; she bit her lip. 

“I don’t know what to do,” he whispered. “I – I don’t think I’m a Musketeer anymore.” He finally looked at her face. “I broke Athos’s wrist. Porthos is in the hospital and I went to see him and I broke Athos’s wrist.”

“Is he the one who punched you?” Constance used the fact that his hands were preoccupied to get a better look at his bruising, tipping his head slightly to the side. 

“I deserved it.” Aramis looked into depths of his mug. “I – I can’t stay here.”

Yes, she definitely needed to call someone. Athos probably wouldn’t be who he wanted to see, but she had Treville’s number. She’d tell him it was an emergency and he’d break every speed limit – and possibly law – where his men were concerned. 

“Yes, you can. You stay right here and get warm. I think I have a cookie or two left over from that luncheon the other day. You stay right here.” She gave him as stern a look as she could muster given the fact he looked like a kicked, half-drowned puppy, and retreated once more to the kitchen. She picked up the phone and dialed Treville’s cell from memory. 

“Aramis is here and he’s – he’s in rough shape. Yes, I’ll stall him.” Constance glanced toward the doorway. “Alright. See you soon.” She remembered to grab the bag with leftover sugar cookies from the counter and headed back for the living room. “Cookies, like I promised.”

The mug was on the mantle and Aramis was gone. And so were her car keys.

 

It was late. There was no guarantee she’d still be awake and yet Aramis’s autopilot had led him back to her. She was, and always would be, his saving grace and safe place. 

Which was why it was three in the morning and he was standing on her doorstep, bloodstained, bruised, and in need of the comfort only she could provide. 

He rang the doorbell. Waited. Knocked. Waited. Knocked again. Waited. Rang the doorbell. 

A light came from inside one of the windows to his right. He leaned heavily against the door frame, trembling from head to toe. The door swung inward and she appeared, dark curls framing her face from where they had come out of her bedtime braid. She’d been doing that since he could remember.

Rosalie d’Herblay, the middle child of Clara d’Herblay’s three children, stared wide-eyed at her little brother, clutching the door handle like it was the only thing keeping her upright. 

“Rene?” she said. “Mi hermano, what happened?” She let go of the door and opened her arms. Aramis all but threw himself into them, burying his face in her neck – though he had to bend down to do so – and soaking her collar with more than just rainwater. 

She ran her fingers through his hair and wondered what could have reduced her brother, the strongest man she knew, to _this_.

 

“I don’t know where he went,” Constance said, sitting ramrod straight in one of the chairs in front of Treville’s desk bright and early Friday morning. She hadn’t gotten much sleep the previous night and the day seemed to be shaping up to be just as trying.

“But he stole your car to do, correct?” Treville asked.

“Borrowed,” she said pointedly. “He borrowed it.”

“Without permission,” Athos added wryly. He stood, one hip propped against the corner of Treville’s desk with his arms crossed over his chest as best he could with a fiberglass cast on his right wrist. 

“Borrowed with intent to return, probably,” Porthos said. He didn’t flinch under the combined gaze of Athos and Treville. “Aramis doesn’t steal. He doesn’t do that.”

“Never thought he’d go AWOL, too, but he’s crossed that bridge.” Treville sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do we have _any_ idea where he’d go?”

He was met with silence.

“Right. Constance, get on the phone and see what you can get from the guys over at the SRU in Toronto,” Treville said. He waited until she left, closing the door after her, to round on Athos and Porthos. “What the _fuck_ has been going on?”

Porthos looked down at his hands, though it pulled on the stitches in the juncture of neck and shoulder. He’d been clipped by a bullet in an op he and Athos were running together – and under the radar as a favor to a friend – and had signed himself out of the hospital AMA in the early hours of the morning once Athos had told him what had happened between him and Aramis. He had a sneaking suspicion he knew the root of the problem, though he hadn’t had a chance to address it himself yet. 

Athos opened his mouth and Treville cut him off with a strained, “If the next word out of your mouth is ‘nothing’ then consider yourself suspended from active duty.”

His mouth snapped shut so hard and fast Porthos wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d cracked a molar or two. 

“Now,” the captain continued, “as it is, I’ve filed and backdated the paperwork for the three of you to have leave time. You have a week to sort out this clusterfuck and get your heads back on straight. If not, then I have to explain to the Commissioner why his best unit has gone off the rails and it hasn’t been reported until now. Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal, sir.” Athos looked at Porthos, who nodded carefully, clearing not trusting his voice to speak. They stood to leave; Athos’s hand was on the doorknob when Treville’s next words chilled him to his core, “This is the second time you’ve lost Aramis, gentlemen.”

Porthos shuddered, swallowing audibly. Athos didn’t bother to look over his shoulder as he said, “It won’t happen again.”

“That’s what you said last time, too.”

Athos wrenched the door open with more force than necessary, not than anyone called him on it.

 

It had been two days and they still hadn’t gotten anywhere. Porthos’s neck and shoulder were cycling through the colors of slowly-fading bruises, and Athos found his cast more of a hassle than anything else. It didn’t help he was right handed. 

Constance hadn’t gotten anywhere with the Toronto SRU. Aramis had family still living in Montreal, but the dispatcher didn’t have current addresses or names. His emergency contact had been his old sergeant, though his mother was apparently still alive and well, and the phone number they had on file had long since been disconnected. 

In a world ruled by instant information gratification, Aramis had found a way to keep his family off the grid.

“Excuse me?”

Constance jumped, tearing her eyes away from her computer screen – which gave her nothing useful – to look at the woman standing in front of her desk. She was fairly tall, and there was something familiar about her. Her hair, perhaps, or the shade of her eyes…

It was funny, but she reminded Constance of Aramis. 

“I hear you’re looking for Rene,” she said, one hand resting lightly on the swell of her belly. 

“Rene Aramis?” Constance jotted the name down. Maybe a real first name would get her something she could pass on to the boys. 

“Yes.” She smiled gently. “He always did like it better when Papa called him Aramis.”

The office went eerily silent and Constance was well aware Treville, Athos, and Porthos were trying hard to listen in without giving themselves away. The amateurs. 

“Do you know him well?”

The woman chuckled. “Of course I know him. I’m his eldest sister, Louisa.”

“Aramis has sisters?” Athos muttered, loud enough for the two of them to hear. 

“Two.” Porthos stepped into view. “I knew that.”

Louisa’s attention swung toward the big man, and her smile grew even wider. “You must be Porthos. Rene talks quite fondly of you.”

To Constance’s absolute shock, Porthos blushed and looked at his feet. Athos looked between Porthos and Louisa with something akin to disbelief. 

“Perhaps we should move this into my office,” Treville suggested gently from his open doorway. 

“Captain.” She waited until she had everyone’s attention. “I know where you can find my brother.”

 

Running calmed him. 

Well, skating calmed him the best but he’d left Quebec in a hurry and hadn’t stopped to get his skates before taking off unannounced to Morin-Heights outside of Montreal. So running would have to do it until he could get somewhere with an indoor ice rink and not a lot of people. 

It would also be mighty tempting to throw himself against the hockey rink walls, too, until he beat some literal sense into himself. Rosalie might not appreciate it, though. She never did like the idea of her little brother hurt, be it body, mind, or soul.

He put his hands on his hips and bent at the waist, intent on stretching his hamstrings. The field he ran through was somewhere he’d found in his teens, shortly after they had to put their mother in an assisted living home. Her mind had been going then – early Alzheimer’s – and she, like her youngest child, had her good days and her bad days. The good days she not only remembered she had children, but recalled their names, too. 

The bad days she didn’t even know her own name, let alone where she was. It broke Aramis’s heart to see her like that, and he made a mental note to visit her before he left for Quebec again. 

Whenever that would be. He honestly wouldn’t put it past Athos and Porthos – especially Porthos – to track his ass down. Good luck to them for it. He’d made the women in his life damn near impossible to find. 

Which was why, when he straightened, his heart rate doubled at the sight of a familiar figure less than ten yards away. 

Porthos stood in the middle of a field, hands in the pockets of his sweatpants and looking like he belonged in what Aramis had always considered his sacred place. He looked damn good there, too, even with the bruising up his neck and down into his shirt. 

But Porthos wasn’t supposed to be _here_. He was supposed to be in a hospital in Quebec and – and – 

“Aramis,” Porthos said with more calm than he should have been able to muster. “We need to talk.”

Aramis’s fight or flight response kicked him hard in the ass, and he knew there was no way he’d last more than a few punches with the bigger man. Not that he ever wanted to hurt Porthos to begin with. 

“Aramis?”

He did the only thing his hindbrain screamed for him to do: he bolted.

What he had forgotten was that Porthos was the sprinter of their group. Within the first two hundred yards, though, and Aramis dug in hard for that distance. Not that it mattered.

A freight train plowed into him from behind, arms wrapped around his torso, and he kept his mouth closed so as not to swallow any dirt and grass. He struggled, trying and failing to shift his hips. Porthos planted a knee on the back of his thigh and used a big hand on the back of his head to keep his face in the dirt. 

Aramis’s shoulders hitched as he panted against the weight holding him down. 

“You gonna run if I let you up?” Porthos said close to his ear. “You do and I’ll catch you again. You know I will.”

The tension leaked out of Aramis like water and he sagged into the hard earth. 

Porthos rested his palm between Aramis’s twitching shoulder blades and rubbed small, soothing circles against his back through his sweaty t-shirt. 

Aramis sat up the second Porthos’s weight was gone, legs splayed out in front of him. He swallowed thickly, and forced out around the lump in his throat, “Why are you here?”

“Because you thought it was a good idea to borrow Constance’s car and run off somewhere without telling us,” he said bluntly. “And because you’ve somehow gone off the deep end without us noticing and we’re sorry about that.”

His brain was fried and all he picked out of that was, “We?”

“Athos is at your sister’s. She’s as cool as you made her seem.”

“She’s my sister,” Aramis said reflexively. “Of course she’s lovely.” He ran his hands through his hair. “But why are you _here_?”

“Well,” Porthos said, shifting enough to lean over Aramis and force him to rest his weight back on his hands, their faces too close together to be considered friendly. “There’s a list of reasons about as long as my arm, but the one at the top is that I love you, you great idiot.”

For the second time in less than ten minutes, Aramis hit the ground with a thud. “You – what?”

“I ain’t good with words,” Porthos said, following him down. 

Then he kissed him.

Aramis stared up at him in disbelief, trembling hands framing the smiling face of the man he’d come to rely on so much. The man he loved with every fiber of his being. 

“I was waiting for the right time.” He rested his weight on his forearms, bringing him chest to chest and belly to belly with Aramis, one heavily muscled thigh between his legs. “And then – then it…” He shrugged. 

“I thought you were straight,” Aramis choked out. “I thought there was no way – and I wanted to see you in the hospital and Athos was a jackass and – oh, Jesus, I think I broke his wrist.” His eyes widened.

“You did,” Porthos said. “He’s in a cast.”

“Oh, fuck. Oh, fuckity fuck.”

Porthos snorted, and then kissed him again. Aramis relaxed significantly after that, still unable to quite believe this was somehow not a dream.

 

Athos had gotten deft at dealing with shit no one in their right mind would think would ever happen. He’d arrested his now-ex-wife for the murder of his brother, had basically trashed the law degree he’d spent a majority of his portion of the family fortune to get by not using it, and the teammate he’d figured to be the most put together out of all of them had gone AWOL after breaking his wrist in an ER full of people.

Now he was having tea with one of Aramis’s sisters – who he didn’t even know the mad _had_ \- in her home in Morin-Heights, and trying to figure out how to word this to Treville. 

Because Treville was meaner than a dog shittin’ tacks and Athos had sworn to himself he wouldn’t let any of his men face that wrath alone.

“You’re very quiet,” Rosalie said. 

“I struggle with small talk,” Athos admitted. “And you don’t mind the silence.”

“No.” She ran her fingertip around the rim of her cup. “But my brother has been unnaturally quiet since he arrived. He slept on my couch when he arrived, and he woke up more than once.”

This was not a conversation he’d expected to be having. “He has nightmares. I do, too.” Not about the same thing, thank God, though he wouldn’t wish his private hell on anyone else, just like Aramis wouldn’t wish his memories of a winter forest on anyone, either.

“I can tell the two of you take good care of him,” Rosalie said. “That is all we – Louisa, my mother, and I – have wished for him since he left home.”

“We do our best. I promise.”

“I know.” She smiled knowingly and it was like looking at a female version of Aramis. “He knows it, too.”

Athos was saved from having to come up with something to follow _that_ by Aramis and Porthos tripping through the kitchen door. Aramis stopped short and Porthos had to pull him the rest of the way to the table and shove him in a seat next to Athos. 

“Athos,” Aramis said, eyes still with their fading bruises wide and slightly wet, “I’m – “

“If you say you’re sorry I’m going to stab you with a spoon,” Athos said. 

More than one set of eyebrows rose. Aramis sucked in a deep breath and smiled his first real smile in what felt like days. It widened when Porthos stepped up behind him and draped a proprietary arm over his shoulder, resting his chin against Aramis’s unruly hair. 

Athos motioned between the two of them and smiled wryly. “You two can explain _this_ to the captain.”

“Nah,” Porthos said. “I wanna see if he can figure it out.”

Rosalie snapped a picture with her phone of the three of them. She needed one of her brother’s chosen family for her desk at work. 

 

Part of his original problem had been that, since Porthos had moved in with him after the collapse of the roof over his own living room, he’d been integrated in his space in such a way that it had become damn difficult to keep his touches on the friendship side of the line. 

The line, for all intents and purposes, was gone. 

Aramis could touch what he wanted when he wanted. He was naturally tactile, and this was – he was like a kid in a candy shop with his parents’ credit card, to be honest. 

He didn’t exactly know where to start, truthfully.

“You’re frowning.”

“Hm?” He turned to look at Porthos standing at the stove next to where he sat on the counter. 

“You’re frowning.” Porthos shut the burner off and shifted; Aramis parted his knees, wrapping his legs around Porthos’s hips. 

“Would you believe me if I said it’s been a long time since I’ve done…this?” He forced himself to meet Porthos’s eyes. “Since I’ve…made love?”

“Yes,” Porthos said. At Aramis’s incredulous look he added, “You have this look – this smile – you have when you’ve gotten some the night before. You haven’t worn that in a long time.”

Aramis inched toward the edge of the counter and looped his arms around the broad shoulders in front of him. “You know my smiles?”

He shrugged. “I know you. S’pretty much the same thing.”

Warm hands settled on his waist, fingertips sliding under his shirt, and Aramis hummed in appreciation. He kissed up the smooth column of Porthos’s throat to the stubble on his jaw, working his way toward his ear to whisper, “Love me?”

“Always.”

Those same hands traced down to his thighs and slid him forward off the counter. He tightened his arms and legs around Porthos though he knew there was no way he’d drop him. Dinner completely forgotten, Porthos carried him down the hall to Aramis’s ridiculous double bed and dropped him on the mattress. He followed him down, inserting a thigh between Aramis’s legs to give him something to rut against, and kissed him senseless. 

Aramis arched against the hand tracing his abs. 

“Easy,” Porthos murmured. “I’ve got you.”

“I know.” He looked up, eyes wide and trusting. “I know. Think you can take my pants off now?”

“Bossy little shit, aren’t you?” Still, he popped the button on Aramis’s jeans and eased the zipper down. 

“I have waited a long time for you,” he said with a groan. “I didn’t think I could have you.”

“You,” Portho said between kisses as he worked to get layers of clothes off the pair of them, “are an idiot. All you had to do was ask.”

 _Or run off to Montreal after breaking Athos’s wrist,_ he wanted to add, though he had the feeling he’d ruin the mood. And that was the last thing he wanted to do. 

“I was trying to be subtle.”

Aramis froze, his eyebrows heading for his hairline. “Subtle? You?”

Porthos tossed a t-shirt and two pairs of boxers over the side of the bed. “Key word is trying, ‘Mis. And I clearly didn’t try hard enough.”

“Direct is much more your style – oh, shit, do that again.” Aramis had one hand fisted in the sheet beneath him and the other on the shoulder that didn’t bear the most recent bullet scar. 

He did the motion again, carefully cataloguing Aramis’s reactions to his touch. A shift of the hips, a moan, the way his mouth fell open. All of it was beautiful to him and he wanted to see as much of it as possible. 

Aramis scrabbled a hand toward his bedside stand; Porthos got the hint and fished out the half-empty tube of KY. 

“Direct, eh?” he whispered against Aramis’s sweaty temple. He followed, even when Aramis threw his head back with a moan. “Tell me what you want, Aramis.”

Porthos then found out that, when properly motivated, Aramis would cough up any and all fantasies rattling around in his head. In a mix of languages, only one of which Porthos could actually comprehend. 

Soon enough – though not soon enough for Aramis – he was on his side with Porthos spooned up behind him. Porthos prompted him gently to lift his leg toward his chest, and when he was slowly filled he couldn’t help but feel like a piece of him was finally, _finally_ content. 

 

“How long as he been in there?” Porthos asked, leaning against the wall by Constance’s desk and looking at the closed door to Treville’s office. Every now and then they could clearly hear the captain as though he were in the hallway. 

Treville was so irate he’d switched to his native French on his second sentence in. 

Athos shrugged, forcing himself to keep his arm lax as Constance looked for a suitable place to sign his cast. She picked a place between Rosalie and Porthos, and deftly wrote her name in silver Sharpie. It stood out marvelously against the black fiberglass. 

“I think he was more scared of me than he was of the captain,” Constance said, tossing the Sharpie back in the pen holder on her desk. “Though he did look infinitely more relaxed today than he has in a long time.”

Porthos smirked. “We had a nice quiet night in last night.”

“That’s good.” She smiled brightly up at him, and the only hint she knew what he was referring to was the glint in her eye. Turning back to her computer, she muttered, “Finally.”

He pretended not to hear her; Athos pretended to the floor would, eventually, swallow him whole. 

The door opened; a chagrined Aramis with his hands buried in his pockets wandered into the hallway. Treville barked something at the three of them and slammed the door hard enough to rattle the picture frames on the wall. 

“Well, he’s not happy,” Aramis said, stating the obvious. “But I convinced him that I’m okay and that nothing like that would happen again.”

“Are you, though?” Athos asked. “Really okay?”

Aramis let his eyes wander briefly to Porthos and the half-smile playing on his lips and said definitively, “Definitely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Stealth crossover moment - Ed refers to Ed Lane from _Flashpoint_. My headcanon is that Aramis would have trained, at some point, with Ed, or maybe have gotten some pointers from him. They would have at least talked, probably. The SRU seems like a pretty tightknit family of sorts.


	5. What's In a Name?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“You should name your rifle.”_
> 
> _Aramis nearly snorted coffee out his nose. He swallowed reflexively, instead, coughed, and looked at d’Artagnan with raised eyebrows. “Excuse me?”_
> 
>  
> 
> Exactly what it says on the tin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya'll are still rock stars and I can't thank each and every one of you enough.
> 
> (I figured we needed something light after the last couple of chapters and before I decide to tackle that massive PTSD angst-fest that is Aramis and the massacre at Savoy.)
> 
> A **huge** thank you to the absolutely fantastic folks at TheBetaBranch. I've missed you all. 
> 
> Hopefully you chuckle a time or two. And again, if you recognize it, I don't own it.

“You should name your rifle.”

Aramis nearly snorted coffee out his nose. He swallowed reflexively, instead, coughed, and looked at d’Artagnan with raised eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“People name things,” he said with a shrug. “You should name your rifle.”

“And why would I want to do _that_?” Aramis leaned back in his chair and looked at Porthos. “Are you listening to this?”

“Listening and trying not to laugh, yeah,” Porthos said. “Though I’m mostly trying to decide if ‘rifle’ is a euphemism.”

d’Artagnan blushed hotly; Aramis glared across the conference table with a snapped, “I’m not naming _that_ , either, thank you very much.”

Porthos leaned forward. “Ooh, but think of the possibilities, ‘Mis. You could call it your sword.”

“This isn’t what I meant,” d’Artagnan muttered. “I meant his rifle. You know – the one he uses to shoot bad guys with.”

“Don’t you even,” Aramis threatened, pointing to Porthos who was biting his bottom lip and looking in serious danger of losing control of his laughter. “Porthos…”

He choked and the laughter rolled out of him. d’Artagnan buried his face in his hands as Aramis let off a string of harsh words in Spanish. It only seemed to make Porthos laugh harder. 

Athos took one step through the doorway with an armful of case files, noted the atmosphere – Aramis was chucking pencils at a hysterical Porthos with unerring aim while d’Artagnan watched wide-eyed and red-faced – and turned right back around. He’d try to get the copier to cooperate again, and then maybe when he came back his team would remember how to act their age.

Not likely, but a man could hope.

 

“Alice.”

Aramis heaved a sigh, chambered a round and sighted through the scope at the paper target a couple hundred yards away. 

“Janie.”

He pulled the trigger and did his best to ignore the names Porthos and d’Artagnan traded with each other.

“Sasha.”

Another bullet, another clean shot through the hole he’d already made in the head. 

“Petunia.”

Aramis took the last shot of his practice for the day, thumbed on the safety, and climbed gracefully to his feet, rifle slung over his shoulder. “Seriously? _Petunia?_ ”

The pair of them shrugged nonchalantly. 

“What if it’s not a girl? Ever think of that?” he snapped. Because his rifle might _not_ be a woman. 

He took a moment to really think about that previous thought and wanted to immediately whack his head off the nearest hard, stationary surface. 

“You’d have a boy rifle?” d’Artagnan asked. 

“It’s a rifle,” Aramis said with no small amount of exasperation. 

Porthos rubbed a hand over his jaw, considering the both of them. “What about Arthur?”

Aramis threw his hands up and walked away.

“So, Arthur, then?” Porthos called after him. He got a raised middle finger over the shoulder in response. 

 

“How about Bernard?” Porthos said out of the blue as they waited for the elevator to take them to their floor of the Garrison. 

Aramis didn’t dignify that with a response. Not even a raised eyebrow. 

“Bernice?”

He rolled his eyes and beelined for the conference room as soon as the doors open. 

“How about Bernadette?”

“I’m not listening to you,” Aramis called back, well aware Constance was watching and completely failing to keep the smile off of her face. He sat himself down at the table in the conference room, glanced at d’Artagnan, and did a double take. 

d’Artagnan had several computer printouts in front of him covered in neat columns. What drew Aramis’s attention was the title: Common Baby Names.

“You two,” he said, “are out of your damn mind. And you need something to focus on other than naming my rifle for me.”

Porthos sat in the chair next to him and gave him a gentle shove with his foot to send Aramis rolling across the tile toward d’Artagnan. Aramis grabbed the table with a scowl, and heaved himself back the direction he’d come with the intent to play a less-than-friendly version of bumper chairs with Porthos. As it was, Aramis sailed harmlessly by his target when, Porthos having seen him coming a mile off, deftly wheeled himself out of the line of fire.

“Children,” Athos chided, dropping into a chair and opening the manila folder he’d brought with him. “Can we focus, please?”

“It’s a rifle, not a child,” Aramis hissed at Porthos and d’Artagnan. 

“You said to me once it was your baby,” d’Artagnan shot back. “Children should have names.”

“It’s not my firstborn, but would you like me to name it after you? _Charles_?” Aramis didn’t let his temper get the best of him when he could help it, but baby names? Really? 

“ _Enough_ ,” Athos said in a tone that had Aramis’s shoulders stiffening of their own accord. “Figure out the Christening later, right now Treville wants us to focus on Verock. He used to be a low-level drug dealer, but a few extra dollars and some good business in a shady part of town as made him think he can run all of Quebec.”

“Isn’t that a case for narcotics?” Porthos asked, perusing the information sheet Athos slid to him. 

“Normally. Treville offered us – Team One specifically – as backup.” He looked briefly at each face with a wry smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “He somehow seems to think we’ll behave ourselves playing in someone else’s sandbox.”

There were several snorts. 

“That would imply that we were well-behaved to begin with,” Porthos muttered to Aramis. 

“Some of us still aren’t housebroken yet.” Aramis dodged the swat immediately following his words. Even the glare Athos threw his way couldn’t dampen his grin. 

“Gentlemen, and I use the term loosely,” Athos said dryly enough to spontaneously combust, “do I need to remind you you’re currently being paid to be here and be productive?”

On that note, the three of them seemed to corral their focus into something workable and, when the time came, dangerous. 

 

Aramis handed his rifle to Porthos and put his right foot in the stirrup d’Artagnan made with his hands. He shoved hard, d’Artagnan pushed, and Aramis grabbed the hanging lader of the fire escape with little difficulty, pulling himself up. 

“Who needs workouts when you can just hang out of women’s bedroom windows,” Porthos said cheerfully, well aware that while Aramis was a terrible flirt – who would make a pass at anyone who caught his eye, regardless of gender – the only bed he’d been in for going on a year and a half was Porthos’s. 

Well, technically the bed was Aramis’s, but Porthos hated technicalities and when they’d made the decision to split the rent down the middle everything else had sort of been thrown in, too. 

“Women love a man with muscles,” Aramis shot back with a smile, flexing once he was on the metal platform. “You should look into that.”

“I’ll consider it,” he said dryly. “Here’s your gun.”

Aramis crouched to wrap his hand around the cool barrel of his rifle. “Thank you, boys. Be seeing you soon.”

“Still think she looks like a Vivian,” d’Artagnan muttered as he and Porthos started down the alley. Aramis had a few more floors to climb before he reached the roof and they left him to it. 

_”That’s right up there with Petunia and a big fat no way in hell,”_ Aramis’s voice came through their earpieces. 

There was a rush of static that could only be Athos’s long-suffering sigh. He confirmed it when he followed it with, _”Can we please **try** to look like we know what we’re doing?”_

That was the beauty of being patched into someone else’s communication system – everybody had a set of ears and an open mic. Athos didn’t care who heard what just as long as he didn’t get stuck with the paperwork at the end of it.

 _”In position,”_ Aramis said. _”With eyes on everyone. Alec, your tie still looks horrible.”_

 _”Still looks a damn sight better than that fuzz you try to pass off as facial hair,”_ Alec answered smoothly. 

Athos, standing next to the narcotics sergeant, resisted the urge to slap his palm off his forehead.

 

Aramis tipped his head side to side to keep his muscles relatively loose. He relaxed his shoulders and, for the most part, tuned out the chatter in his earpiece. It was automatic for him to keep tabs on his teammates – Porthos and d’Artagnan were making quick friends with the narcotics boys; Athos was probably looking twenty kinds of broody somewhere by an equally serious sergeant – even if he didn’t say anything in response. They knew he was watching. 

Him and…

Well, that was just an utterly ridiculous thought. Naming his rifle. He’d been adamant she – it, it was a thing – didn’t need a name. A rifle wasn’t the same as a first car or, perhaps, naming a laptop. 

His sister’s first car had been lovingly named Charlie. Aramis still didn’t know the _why_ of it, and when he’d asked Rosalie all she’d said was, “It fit.”

The gun in his hands, if he could call it such a simple thing, sometimes felt like an extension of him. He directed it, and together they tried to save as many, if not more lives than they had to take. She – he finally had to give up, the rifle was a she if it was anything – was as steady as they came. He took good care of her, and she, in a way, took very good care of the people he held closest to him. 

Dependable. Steadfast. Sturdy.

_Betsy._

He didn’t know where it came from, but as he stared stupidly at his rifle he had to admit it just…fit. 

Movement in the alley below drew his attention, and he refocused on the task at hand. He tracked all the major players, breathing deep and even, and watched a brilliant piece of collaborative police work come to a good end.

 

He backtracked to the fire escape and down. Resting his forearms on the railing, he waited for someone – most likely Porthos and d’Artagnan – to make sure he was still in one piece. There hadn’t been any shots fired, but it was their…little ritual of sorts. They needed visual confirmation they were, relatively speaking, unharmed. 

“Oi, you!”

Aramis dipped his chin. “About time.”

“Some of us had work to do.” Porthos’s expression softened minutely. “We get to briefly debrief and then it’s a long weekend for us.”

 _That_ was unexpected. “We have tomorrow off?”

“Treville said we handled ourselves well.” He shrugged. “And nobody died, which is always a bonus.”

Crouching, he lowered his gun toward his partner in more ways than one. “Here, take Betsy.”

Porthos grinned as he took the rifle. “Betsy, eh?”

Aramis dropped lightly to the ground and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Yeah. It just…seemed to fit.”

“Betsy,” he repeated. He looked the rifle over carefully, and finally nodded. “I like it. Much better than Petunia.”

Slinging Betsy over his shoulder, Aramis tipped his head back and laughed.


	6. Dancing in Circles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“No,” Athos said as familiar music started up and most of the bar seemed to take notice. “Absolutely fucking not.”_
> 
> _“Absolutely fucking yes,” Aramis said, gesturing for Athos to get his ass on the table. “On your honor, you made a deal.”_
> 
> _“Oh, fuck my life,” he muttered, handing Aramis his empty bottle and putting his foot on the felt._
> 
>    
> Or: Three times someone else danced on a pool table or bar, one time Aramis did, and that one time Athos did Karaoke to Katy Perry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honest to everything that's good and holy have no idea what this is let alone how it happened. I'm currently in the middle of writing a ridiculously long chapter that I hope to have up as soon as possible (I just need to finish it). And, because I love you all and you've been waiting so long, have something that's borderline crack. 
> 
> Songs (in order of appearance):  
> "Wannabe" - Spice Girls  
> "Lady Marmalade" - Christina Aguilera, Li'l Kim, Mya, Pink  
> "Bad Romance" - Lady Gaga  
> "Firework" - Katy Perry  
> "Walk Away" - Kelly Clarkson  
> "So What" - P!nk  
> "Best Day of My Life" - American Authors
> 
> I honestly couldn't keep a straight face while writing this, so I hope you at least get a chuckle out of it. Again, I don't own anything you recognize.

**Athos**  
He’d lost track of how many beers and shots they’d had. It couldn’t have been too many, as the room wasn’t spinning, though everything had gone a little hazy around the edges. Nothing Athos wasn’t used to, and if he had to admit it, it was a pleasant place to be in. It made him malleable, to a point.

Something Aramis and Porthos were going to take shameless advantage of.

“What happens if I win?” Athos said, looking between one grinning idiot and the other.

“Not gonna happen,” Porthos muttered while Aramis nudged him hard in the ribs and said, “I dance on the pool table to your choice of song.”

“And if you win it’s me doing it?”

Porthos’s forehead dropped to the table, shoulders shaking with laughter though he didn’t make a sound. 

True, Athos had never seen Aramis shoot pool before, but he’d been playing – sort of, not really, if he honestly thought about it – for years. He could do this. 

Athos took a healthy swig of his beer, pointed at Aramis’s chest, and said, “You have a deal.”

The feral smile he received in return was _more_ than disconcerting. He took his beer with him to the pool table, grabbed a cue. 

“Can I break?” Aramis asked, the very picture of innocence. 

“Sure.” Athos propped his hip against the felt. 

Aramis was very precise as he racked, settled himself at the opposite end, and prepared to break. Porthos stood to the side with a satisfied smirk, almost wishing he’d bet money on this. When Aramis sunk three balls off the break, Athos froze with his bottle halfway to his lips and realized he just might be in over his head. 

Less than fifteen minutes later, Aramis was calling “Eight ball, corner pocket,” and Athos hadn’t shot once. He put his cue back with more precision than necessary, and downed the rest of his beer in one go while Aramis went over to the juke box in the corner. 

Porthos was already guffawing. 

“No,” Athos said as familiar music started up and most of the bar seemed to take notice. “Absolutely fucking not.”

“Absolutely fucking yes,” Aramis said, gesturing for Athos to get his ass on the table. “On your honor, you made a deal.”

“Oh, fuck my life,” he muttered, handing Aramis his empty bottle and putting his foot on the felt. He heaved himself up there as _So tell me what you want, what you really, really want_ blared through the speakers. 

“You’re supposed to _dance_ , jackass,” Aramis called, swaying his hips to the beat. “Get down with your bad self.”

Porthos was letting the wall hold him upright, incapable of doing it himself, and doing his best not to choke on air while he was recording with his phone.

Athos popped his chest rhythmically while attempting to gyrate his hips. “I seriously fucking hate you right now.”

Aramis kept a straight face until Athos started to look like he was alternatively pushing a shopping cart and revving a weedwhacker. Then there was the Charlie Brown, and while Athos tried to pop, lock, and drop it Aramis lost his battle to stay upright, collapsing in a heap of laughter and tears on the floor. 

The song ended and a red-faced Athos rested his hands on his hips doing his best to look anywhere but at the multitude of staring faces. Someone in the back started the slow clap, and before he knew it – and could get off the damn pool table – the entire bar was on its feet. Athos took a stilted bow and finally hopped down. 

Porthos tucked his phone away and staggered over to peel Aramis off the floor. 

“I’d appreciate the warning I’m about to go against a pool shark next time, you fuckers,” Athos said.

“Not – not a pool shark,” Aramis gasped. 

“You owe me multiple drinks.” It didn’t seem possible, but Athos went redder when a woman nearly twice his age approached with a twenty in her hands and asked for an encore. “Make that multiple shots.”

 

**d’Artagnan**  
“I’m pretty good at pool,” d’Artagnan said, eyeing the table to his right. 

“Can’t beat Aramis,” Porthos said before popping a loaded nacho chip in his mouth. 

Aramis smiled smugly into his beer; Athos turned an interesting shade of pink and refused to meet anyone’s eyes let alone comment. 

“I can beat him,” d’Artagnan said with all the confidence of youth coupled with goodly amounts of alcohol. 

“Shall we bet on it?” Aramis asked with something much like a predatory gleam in his eye. 

“How much?”

Porthos snorted. “It’s not so much a how much but a – a what.”

“I win, I pick the song and you get your boogy on top of the pool table,” Aramis said casually. “You win, you pick my song and I show everybody that Shakira isn’t the only one with hips that don’t lie.”

d’Artagnan considered it for a moment longer than Athos had assumed he would before he finally agreed. “Deal. I’ll even let you break.”

“Wonderful.” Aramis and d’Artagnan went to the pool table with Porthos trailing along while Athos went for another beer. Having already been through this whole ordeal he was rather looking forward to watching someone else embarrass themselves thoroughly. 

About four shots in – in which Aramis hadn’t let d’Artagnan have the cue – d’Artagnan began sporting the look of a man who was slowly realizing he’d been had. 

“What did you major in at university again?” d’Artagnan asked as Aramis sunk another ball. 

“Theology,” he said calmly. He straightened, eyed his next shot, and added, “But I minored in physics. All the better to understand wind speeds, directions, and how it’s going to effect a projectile in motion. Eight ball, side pocket.” He sunk it easily and leaned lightly against his cue with a smile. “So. Up you get.”

“Is he – he can’t be serious, can he?”

Athos, having witnessed the tail end of Aramis’s performance, snorted. “Getcha ass on the pool table.”

After clearing it the rest of the way, d’Artagnan nimbly jumped up there. Between the attention of his friends and the curiosity of the people in the bar currently looking his way, he fidgeted nervously. He didn’t turn red until he realized what the song was.

Aramis came back, snapping in time with the music. “I thought it appropriate.”

“You would think playing heavy metal at a funeral was appropriate,” Porthos muttered as d’Artagnan decided the best course of action would be to throw self-consciousness out the window and make the entire thing into performance. Complete with singing into his fist, lip-syncing the words, and moves that would have looked more at home in front of a stripper pole. 

It was, as Aramis had suggested, oddly appropriate for _Lady Marmalade._

d’Artagnan bowed deeply when he was finished, and added an extra swing in his hips on his way to the table his friends had retreated to. They clapped for him, and he took his next beer from Aramis. 

“I am never playing pool with you again,” he said, sinking into a seat and turning red to the roots of his hair.

 

**Porthos and Athos**  
Aramis sat in the back of the bar with d’Artagnan, and Constance, who had her camera out, waiting. The lights dimmed, except for the spots on the bar. The men behind the length of glossy wood stopped what they were doing, and began clapping. One by one they got on the surface, dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a plan black t-shirt. 

“And they don’t know we caught the guy earlier?” d’Artagnan asked as Lady Gaga’s _Bad Romance_ began to come through the speakers. 

“Nope,” Aramis said, settling back in his chair with his eyes fixed on Athos and Porthos, still undercover, and up in the middle with the rest of the bar tenders. “They don’t have a clue.” He checked his watch. “They have about four hours left on shift.”

Constance’s chuckle turned into cackle by the first chorus as the boys performed an abbreviated – there was only so much room on the bar - _Bad Romance_ dance in unison with the others. 

“And how many more musical numbers?” d’Artagnan failed to keep the grin off his face. 

“At least one more.” Aramis’s foot swung along with the beat. “Beyonce’s absolutely fabulous _Single Ladies_.”

“We can stay, right?” Constance asked, grinning madly. 

“Of course,” d’Artagnan said, clinking his bottle with Aramis’s. “Wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

 

**Athos (because he has no sense of self-preservation when it comes to Aramis)**  
“Distraction he says,” Athos muttered, pacing backstage. “You’ll do fine, he says. You’ll think of something.”

Well, he had thought of something. It just…wasn’t the something he had ever thought he would think of. He was, however, infinitely glad Porthos wasn’t somewhere in the audience as he didn’t need another YouTube video to go viral. Granted, it was dark enough that Athos’s face couldn’t be readily identified – otherwise his undercover prospects would be shot to shit and Treville would be pissed – but if one knew him well enough, one could figure out it was him flailing up on a pool table to the Spice Girls.

“Are you sure you don’t want to pick the song?” the woman asked him.

“No,” he said. “You can pick.”

“Great.” She disappeared around the curtain again. The next thing he knew she was on the microphone with his introduction. “Put your hands together for another first-timer – Oliver!”

Aramis was going to pay for this. Through his fucking nose in alcohol purchases, if Athos had his way. He shuffled out onto the stage, took the microphone from her, and did his best not to look at the crowd but the monitor his words were going to show up on. 

The beat started; he moved his shoulders side to side with it, and nearly missed the bouncing ball that was his cue to actually sing.

He took a deep breath, opened his mouth, and hoped for the best.

 

Aramis led the daughter of a prominent French politician who had been kidnapped while on holiday in Quebec City through the maze-like hallways of the building. Thankfully, there was only one way into and out of the room she’d been kept in. Unfortunately, there was only one way into and out of the room, and that one way led them back through the bar. 

She had his hoodie on under her coat, the hood pulled up and low to disguise her face. She also had a death grip on his hand, despite his best efforts to reassure her that he and his partner were indeed there to get her out and they wouldn’t let her be taken again. 

They started across the room, keeping to the shadows, when Aramis heard the beginning of Katy Perry’s _Firework._ What he hadn’t expected to hear and which stopped him completely in his tracks, was Athos’s surprisingly on key – and damn good – tenor. 

He stopped. He stared. Long enough for Nicki to press herself against his arm and whisper, “Who is _that_?”

“My partner,” he murmured, wincing as Athos fell back on his patented dance moves. Namely, the shopping cart and abbreviated weedwhacker. 

“ _He’s_ a cop?”

Aramis had to admit given the evidence in front of him, he wouldn’t be inclined to believe it, either. Especially when Athos popped his chest in a way that had been insanely popular in middle school dances. He almost wished Porthos was here to see it, too, mostly so he could video it.

“Can we go? Please?”

He shook himself. “Of course. I’m sorry. Let’s go.”

They burst through the front door and onto the street as Athos hit his high notes to the sounds of whistles and catcalls from the audience. 

 

**Aramis**  
“No,” he said, hand on his jaw in disbelief. “No fucking way.”

“Yes,” Constance said, grinning widely. “Fucking way.”

Aramis surveyed the the table in front of him. “Good God, can we – can I get a do over?”

“Hell no,” Porthos and d’Artagnan said while Athos added his, “Fuck no,” a beat later. 

“I choose the song, right? That’s the deal, isn’t it?” She was way too damn happy for his taste. 

“Yes, but – wait.” He looked beseechingly at the other three. “Guys?”

Athos waved his phone in Aramis’s direction, while Porthos assisted him toward the pool table with a slap on the ass. d’Artagnan saluted with his beer bottle. Aramis climbed on the felt, still holding his cue, and shooed the balls into the pockets with his foot. 

He’d scratched. For the first time in years he’d lost on a scratch. On the last shot, too. He knew if he’d missed Constance would have sunk it anyway, so his position was rather inevitable, to be honest.

Well, if they were expecting a show, they’d get a show. Also, he’d seen the music video a time or two, and he treated the cue like Kelly treated her microphone stand. Only with much more hip action and movement along the felt as _Walk Away_ broke into the first chorus.

Someone wolf-whistled. There was a catcall or four, and Aramis, already without most of his self-consciousness to begin with, shed what little of it he had left. He even took a leaf out of Athos’s book with a slight shopping cart and weedwhacker. 

Athos, next to Porthos who was upright and grinning, said proudly, “I taught him that.”

Porthos doubled over laughing. 

d’Artagnan had strayed to the juke box in the melee; Pink’s _So What_ came up next, and Constance took over taping duties as Athos joined Aramis so he could better learn a new move – the sprinkler. 

 

**Treville**  
Shortly before closing time on Friday afternoon his email pinged. It was one of those chain emails that had been making the rounds lately, and this one had been forwarded to him from Constance. The subject line read QUEBEC CITY’S FINEST. The only words in the email itself was the following: 

_For when you need a good laugh. The boys of the SITRU are there to provide._

Treville didn’t immediately recognize the song but he, upon closer inspection of his screen, recognized the people. Or the person. Or rather his right hand man in Athos, on a pool table in what looked like The Wren, doing what amounted to the same motion one made when trying to start a weedwhacker. 

It transitioned to d’Artagnan doing an awkward shimmy with his hips – also on a pool table – and when it turned into Porthos and Athos on one of their undercover missions dancing on a bar, Treville lost his battle to stay quiet. In fact, he threw his head back and laughed harder than he had in a good long while.

_I hear it callin’ outside my window, I feel it in my soul, the stars were burning so bright, the sun was out to midnight, I say we lose control…_

He bookmarked the page immediately.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alexander Dumas is _rolling_ in his grave.


	7. The Tactician's Playbook

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Dressed in black. Ski mask. Gun._
> 
> _Bare trees took the place of the kitchen cupboards and terror so cold it was hot flooded through his veins. Aramis’s first thought was **No.**_
> 
> _His second was: **Run. Now. Out.**_
> 
> Or: Someone with a grudge to settle with Treville takes Team One hostage. The four of them have never been good at playing damsels in distress, and Treville shows what he's capable of when his family-by-choice is threatened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 14,500 words and who knows how many days later, there's BAMF Treville. I whumped everybody (I think, I probably whumped some more than others). 
> 
> I did steal some dialogue from episode 9 (because the banter between Athos and Aramis was too good to pass up in places), and you'll probably find it pretty easily. Also, I took _a lot_ of creative liberties with Treville's backstory. I've either totally screwed that up, or it works. 
> 
> A BIG thank you to Zoe, who has been an awesome cheerleader for this fic, and more big thank yous to the lovelies over at the Beta Branch. 
> 
> Also HUGE thank yous to the readers. I can't tell you often enough that you guys are awesome. Seriously.
> 
> I don't own anything you recognize. 
> 
> **Warnings:** PTSD, Triggers, Knife-play, allusions to torture. 
> 
> And if there's anything I need to fix just let me know.

Athos had made the walk from the Garrison to his apartment thousands of times. Most of them after dark, too, and with the exception of a few attempts to pickpocket him – which had all ended fairly badly for the idiot who tried, the least of his worries being jail time – he made it without trouble.

Tonight felt different. 

Maybe it was the hint of spring in the hair, the subtle change that warmer weather was finally coming. The winter had been brutal, and while he was used to after years of living in both Quebec as a province and Quebec City, it didn’t make it any easier to weather. 

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled and he stopped. He glanced over his shoulder only to see the same thing he’d been looking at for most of his walk – a deserted, nighttime street. 

Still, he took his hands from the pockets of his leather coat and flexed his fingers. Putting a hand on his sidearm would be an outright tell he was nervous, and if anybody was watching – which he damn well knew someone was – it would be a dead giveaway.

His shoulders tightened; he sucked in a hard breath, ducked, and spun, slamming his fist into his assailant’s gut. Athos catalogued the details as quick as he could while dodging punches – medium build, dark clothing, ski mask. It had been a long time since he’d had someone disguised in such a way try to mug him he nearly snorted in amusement.

It never occurred to him there might be more than one.

Something heavy slammed into the back of his head and he staggered into the wall of the nearest building, his legs going out from under him. He saw the second hit coming but couldn’t do anything about it, and then he didn’t care because everything went black.

 

d’Artagnan was in sight of Constance’s house when the feeling he was being watched crept up his spine to settle at the back of his neck. He glanced around discreetly and found, to his growing unease, a black panel van across the street. Leaning against the side was a figure dressed all in black, ski mask included. 

“Hello, d’Artagnan.”

It wasn’t a voice he recognized, and he had to give whoever it was – it sounded male – some credit for sneaking up on him. He turned slowly on his heel and shoved his hands in his pockets. 

“We can do this two ways,” the man said. “You can walk nice and calmly over to that van and get in, or we can make a scene. We make a scene and those lovely gentlemen over there will break and enter into the lovely lady’s home and proceed to traumatize her.”

d’Artagnan’s head whipped around to look at the two men barely discernable from the shadows waiting in the yard presumably to enter through the kitchen door. His heart rate doubled, and he looked at the front window; Constance was most likely curled up on the couch with a book, waiting for him to get home. 

She was a strong woman who had been working for Treville for years. There was no doubt in his mind she’d be scared, but she’d fight. 

He couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to her because of him. 

“They get in first,” d’Artagnan said, motioning to the two in the yard. “Anything happens to her, anything at all, and you will regret it.”

“Understood,” the man said. He made a series of quick hand gestures and the two melted back into the shadows. “Shall we?”

With a sense of unease in his gut, d’Artagnan followed him to the panel van. His shoulders twitched when the two came up behind him, and the hairs at the nape of his neck prickled. 

“You’ll understand, won’t you?”

The door to the van slid open; someone grabbed him by the arm and jammed a needle into the side of his neck. The world wavered sickeningly, and d’Artagnan pitched forward into darkness, figuratively and literally.

 

It wasn’t often he had the chance to relax with a good book at the end of a fairly straight-forward day. As it was, Aramis planned to take full advantage of it until Porthos came home. It would probably be one of those nights where they’d tangle themselves up on the couch, talk about everything and nothing, and traded lazy kisses. 

In other words it was perfectly domestic and Aramis was looking forward to it. 

Which, all things considered, didn’t give him a valid reason for the itch between his shoulder blades and a compulsion to check the door locks for the nth time since he’d finished washing the dinner dishes an hour ago. 

_It’s the apartment. It’s safe. It’s home._ He repeated it to himself like a mantra. Sometimes it worked to bring him out of the downward spiral that usually ended with him with his back against the wall of the bedroom closet, K-BAR knife in one hand and Glock in the other, waiting for an attack that wasn’t there to come.

He rubbed his palms against his jeans, well aware his left leg had started the jackhammer routine and all but powerless to stop it. Standing, he curled his toes in his boots and thought seriously about getting his gun from his bedside table. If anything it would make him feel less…vulnerable.

Aramis took a step toward the bedroom and froze. A finely tuned instinct – cultivated by the SRU and enhanced by a nighttime attack in the woods nearly five years prior – and the sound of a gun cocking had him ducking. A tranquilizer dart buried itself in the wall where his shoulder had been a moment before, and when he looked in the direction of the kitchen his heart nearly stopped. 

Dressed in black. Ski mask. Gun. 

Bare trees took the place of the kitchen cupboards and terror so cold it was hot flooded through his veins. Aramis’s first thought was _No._

His second was: _Run. Now. Out._

He bolted for the door, grabbing the potted plant sitting on the decorative stand on his way by and launching it at the intruder’s head. It was ducked easily, and Aramis’s adrenal system kicked itself into overtime the closer he got to the door. 

Another figure in black appeared from the bathroom, gun in hand.

Aramis dodged a punch and body slammed the first man into the fridge. It rocked dangerously, and he got an arm across the throat, spinning them both and presenting a struggling human shield. The second man had an itchy trigger finger, and the dart aimed for Aramis wound up embedded in his chest. He threw open the door, dropped his assailant, and slipped into the hallway. 

He took the stairs two at a time. A muzzle peeked out at him from the shadows on the second floor landing. Ingrained muscle memory took over, and he twisted his shoulders while simultaneously reaching for the weapon. What he failed to take into account was how much space he needed for the move, his own momentum, and how quickly the next step came at him. He grabbed a fistful of black shirt and held on.

The pair of them went ass over teacups down the next set of stairs to land in a heap at the bottom. 

Everything hurt, his left shoulder most of all. His legs were fine though, and his fight or flight response took over once again. A kick to the head ensured his most recent assailant wouldn’t get up anytime soon, and Aramis dragged himself to his feet only to stumble into the wall. 

Blood trickled down the side of his neck. He’d been nicked.

“Shit,” he muttered, staggering down the next flight of stairs and through the emergency exit door at the bottom. It would take him down by the laundry room rather than the main entrance, and from there he could – he could – 

The night air felt like heaven on his overheated skin. 

He tipped his head back, dragged in a lungful of air, and tried to think. There had to be somewhere he could go. Someplace safe. 

Who was he kidding? He’d thought his apartment was safe and that mindset had just been blown to hell. 

The bushes to his left rustled; Aramis took off like a spooked rabbit. 

He didn’t make it far; he vaulted a low hedgerow and stumbled over a garden gnome. It was enough to slow him down and something heavy slammed into him from the side, forcing him to the ground on his injured shoulder. He yelled, flailing with his elbow and fist, and connected multiple times. Legs free, he scrambled to his knees and prepared to run again.

A hand to his ankle and a vicious pull backward reintroduced him to the dewy grass. 

“No,” he said, clawing at the sod. “Fucking - _no_!”

Aramis looked at the house to his right – it was dark. There were no witnesses. There was only him and the figures in black surrounding him, holding him down. They pulled at the collar of his shirt to get to his neck; he screamed as the needle went in. 

“Let him go. He won’t get far.”

The weight on his arms and legs lifted; he inched forward. White spots danced along his vision. He collapsed on his right side when his arms wouldn’t hold him up anymore, chest heaving with his ragged breathing. It got harder and harder to hold his eyelids up, and before his eyes rolled back he thought – he thought – 

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

 

Porthos knew something wasn’t right the moment he pulled up out front of the apartment building. He slammed the door to the car, didn’t bother to lock it, and jogged inside. By the time he reached the apartment the unease in his gut had settled into something hard and cold curled under his breastbone.

The lock was broken and the door ajar.

“Aramis?” Porthos said, drawing his Glock from the holster at the small of his back. “Aramis?”

He nudged the door open wider. Dirt and broken pottery was scattered all over the floor, and the fridge sat at an angle. The picture frames on the wall were askew, but what drew his attention the most was the dart in the living room wall. 

Aramis was gone.

“You have two options, my friend.”

Porthos turned and leveled his gun at a figure dressed in black in the bathroom doorway. “The fuck are you?”

“No one of consequence, really. A friend of a friend,” the man said calmly through the hole in his ski mask. “Like I said, you have two options. You can come with me quietly, or I can drag you kicking and screaming.”

“Like you dragged Aramis?” He jerked his head toward the dart. “Where is he?”

“Having a snooze somewhere safe. He gave us quite a challenge.”

The words, softly spoken, made Porthos’s blood run hot then cold. If they had showed up here, someplace he and Athos had all but beaten into Aramis’s head was _home_ and _safe_ and forcibly _taken him_ …Porthos was prepared to tear the asshole in front of him limb from limb.

“Thought you might think like that. Here.” He dug a cell phone from his pocket and tossed it to Porthos. “Watch the video.”

With one hand still holding the gun trained between the man’s eyes, Porthos hit the play button. The picture itself was hard to see – taken in the darkness – but he’d recognize the voice anywhere.

_”No. Fucking – no. Please. Please, please no.”_

Aramis. Aramis pleading with them. Muttering and slurring his woods until they finally tapered into an awful silence. 

“So. Quiet and easy?”

Porthos growled under his breath, and gritted out, “If you’ve hurt him I guarantee you you’ll be wishing for me to kill you quick.” He made sure his point was thoroughly across before he thumbed on the safety on his Glock and slammed it the kitchen counter. 

With that he allowed the man to lead him from the apartment he knew Aramis would never again want to set foot in. Not after this.

There was a black panel van waiting by his car when they reached the street. 

“Oh, yeah,” the man said, holding up a syringe. “Can’t have you knowing where we’re going.”

This time Porthos didn’t come quietly. A broken nose, dislocated fingers, and finding out one of his captors had a glass jaw later, Porthos was on the floor of the van watching through the windshield as the street lights faded in and out until his eyes slipped shut.

 

The first thing that registered was smell. Old, damp straw, and something suspiciously like horse. Maybe cow. That prompted him to open his eyes. He blinked several times to get used to the low light and tentatively sat up. His hair brushed the ceiling.

Every muscle in his body stiffened. 

He focused on taking deep, measured breaths as he reached out. Soon – too soon – his hand encountered bars. He followed it along until he met rough wood. That transitioned back to metal bars, and the reality sunk in painfully. 

A cage. He was in a cage.

He panted his next breath, followed by another, and he wished for light. At least then he could see how big his prison was. In the dark, with his hair brushing the ceiling, the walls were closing in. The bars disappeared. The air grew thinner.

Athos scrambled backward, thunked the top of his head off the roof of his cage, and landed hard on something soft that immediately grunted its disapproval. He latched onto the realization he wasn’t alone, clutching a fistful of shirt. The touch was grounding, and it allowed him to calm enough to stop hyperventilating. Sure enough the white spots disappeared from in front of his eyes, and he pressed a hand to his face. 

God, he hated small spaces. He defined small by anything that wasn’t car-sized or bigger. Hell, he sometimes had problems getting the mop out of the hall closet at the Garrison.

But he wasn’t alone, and that, for the moment, seemed to be his saving grace. It would either get better or worse depending on who they had stuck him with. 

With something new to focus on rather than how oxygen flow would somehow be limited by the bars, Athos turned the majority of his attention to the body beside him. He ran his hands up the torso to the shoulders; the slim build suggested either d’Artagnan or Aramis as Porthos was the broadest of the four of them. 

Or maybe it wasn’t anyone he knew. 

The thought shocked him out of his careful breathing, and he flailed for a moment in the burst of anxiety. His fingers slid over, following a path of warmth to the neck, and he found a strong and steady pulse. Zoning on that allowed the terror to retreat a little. It also led him to the metal chain lying against bare skin. 

d’Artagnan, as far as Athos knew, didn’t wear such a token. He fumbled for the front of it and ran his fingers over the small crucifix. Aramis, then. Athos was stuck in a cage with Aramis. 

Aramis shifted, curling away from Athos with a sound suspiciously like a whimper. 

“Aramis?” Athos whispered. “Aramis, you awake?”

“Que?” He flinched away from Athos’s fingertips on his neck. “Que – no. Por favor, no.”

“Shhh, ‘Mis,” Athos said quietly. “It’s Athos.”

“Athos?” Aramis sounded lost, and it made Athos want to tear someone’s arm off and beat them senseless with it. “Athos – que – donde es – donde?”

Athos backed himself into the nearest corner and pulled Aramis with him. He came willingly, if a little uncoordinated with his movements, and all but curled up in Athos’s lap, one hand fisted in his leather jacket. 

“English or French, Aramis,” he murmured. “I can’t understand Spanish.” He rested his head back against the bars and ignored the dull throb at the base of his skull. He’d had worse hangovers before, truthfully. 

Aramis burrowed his right shoulder into Athos’s sternum and curled into a smaller ball than a man of his size had any right to achieve. While Porthos was more suited to handling Aramis when he craved someone else’s touch to calm him, Athos did the best he could and his ran his hand up and down Aramis’s back. He’d seen Aramis sink into the feel of it a thousand times before – this time he flinched away when Athos neared his left shoulder. 

The awkward lay of bone in his back was a dead giveaway. 

“Aramis?” he said quietly, tamping down on his anger. “Did someone hurt you?”

He shuddered, and whispered in French, _”Tried to run. Fell down the stairs.”_

Athos’s aching head did its best to read between the lines. “They chased you? From where?” He had a sinking feeling he knew where and it gave him another reason to wreak as much havoc for their captors as he could if given the opportunity.

_”Home,”_ Aramis said hollowly. _”They raided home.”_

Raided. Like masked assassins had raided a Musketeer training operation in the woods. 

Aramis drew away slightly, sensing Athos’s temper through the rigidity of his muscles. 

“No, Aramis. I’m not angry with you,” he soothed, setting up a gentle rocking motion. Again, it was a move he’d seen Porthos do a hundred times before when Aramis was caught between the present and the past, locked in some nightmare only he could see. It hadn’t happened much outside of those first few, awful months, and it was rare for him to have such a panic attack now. Unless he was massively triggered. 

He ran his fingers through Aramis’s hair, unsurprised when he settled more heavily against his chest, left arm caged protectively between his knees and Athos’s own torso. Setting a shoulder was a two-person job – unless it was Porthos doing the shoving – and as loathe as Athos was to leave the injury unattended, there was little he could do. 

Really, the _only_ thing they could do was wait.

 

Constance woke the next morning with a crick in her neck and the morning sun shining in her eye. She sat up, rolled her shoulders, and nearly shrieked when she looked at the clock. It was only when she was shoveling cereal into her mouth after flying through her normal morning routine did she realize the plate of chicken, broccoli, and rice she’d left out for d’Artagnan hadn’t been touched. She swallowed heavily. Even if he hadn’t been in the mood for dinner when he’d come home – sometimes he wasn’t, sometimes he’d gone out with the boys for a quick bite – he’d at least always put some plastic wrap over it and shove it in the fridge. 

She looked at the mat by the back door. His boots weren’t there. 

_Maybe he didn’t come home last night._

He called. Even if he was staying with Athos or Porthos and Aramis for the night, he still called or texted to let her know. There hadn’t been any new messages on her phone when she’d checked. 

The whole thing gave her a funny feeling in her stomach. It increased tenfold when she got to the office and the boys weren’t there. Treville came out of his office when the four of them were officially two hours late for work – something that had never happened before – and asked her to start calling.

Every cell phone went straight to voice mail. 

“Keep trying them,” he said. “I hope the party was worth it.”

She bit her lip to keep from snapping at him about assuming. She tried Athos first. “Athos, Constance. Give me a call when you get this so we know you’re alright and when you’re coming in, okay? Thank you.”

The next number on her call list was Porthos, followed by Aramis, and d’Artagnan. She folded her hands in front of her after the last message, and, after glancing at Aramis’s name and number, debated about calling his sister. Maybe Rosalie or Louisa had heard from him. 

Constance jumped when her computer jauntily informed her she had a new email message. Thinking it was one of the boys, she clicked to open it and froze. Embedded in the email was a video link, but it was the message that sent chills down her spine.

_I have something of yours. Several somethings, in fact._

Listed after was a set of initials she recognized as Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and d’Artagnan. 

“Captain? Can you come here for a minute? Please?”

Treville must have heard something in her voice he didn’t like as he was at her desk sooner than she thought he would be. 

“Click it,” he said, his forehead creased after reading the short but pointed message.

A private video popped up in a new window. Constance clicked play. The resolution wasn’t very good, and the picture was dark, but they could tell it was bodies. One was on the ground.

_”No. Fucking – no. No.”_

Treville stiffened as Aramis’s terrified voice came through the speakers. He jumped when Aramis screamed. Another voice said, “Let him go. He won’t get far.” They next they heard was Aramis mumbling a litany of “No” and “Please” before his words slurred together and dropped into an uncomfortable silence. The video ended shortly after that, asking her if she wanted to play it again.

Constance put her hand over her mouth, worried she might be ill. Treville was more angry than she’d ever seen him, and when he straightened she was forcibly reminded he’d spent the better part of his life as some sort of soldier, a good portion of his career as a Musketeer. 

“Put Team Three on standby and tell Team Two they have an active investigation,” he said with more calm than either of them felt. “Team One’s been taken.”

 

d’Artagnan flailed himself awake in the dark to the soundtrack of Porthos cursing in a combination of English, French, and a smattering of Spanish he could have only picked up from Aramis. He ground the heel of his hand into his forehead as he sat up, glad he wasn’t alone even if he didn’t have a clue where he was. 

“Porthos,” he croaked. 

“You finally awake?” Porthos asked.

“Finally? How long have you been – where are we?”

Porthos’s shrug was barely discernible in the dark. “Dunno. Somebody’s basement, maybe? We’re sitting on carpet.”

He ran his fingers across the surface under him and could agree it was carpet. Cheap, dirty carpet, but it wasn’t concrete, dirt, or something equally cold. 

They didn’t have long to wait before a door opened and light flooded down a set of stairs on the other side of the room. d’Artagnan stood, only to whack his head on something hard. From the sound next to him Porthos had done the same. More lights flickered on, and d’Artagnan winced, momentarily blinded. 

“Keep your hands where we can see them,” a voice growled. 

d’Artagnan, stooped over as he was, leaned his hands on his thighs. There wasn’t anywhere else to put them, really, and he glanced over at Porthos – who was staring out through the bars of their cage with murder in his eyes. 

“Where are they?” Porthos asked as the door opened and they were grabbed roughly. 

“Where are who?” He produced a set of handcuffs and reached for d’Artagnan. “Your other two teammates? They’re just fine.”

Porthos grudgingly allowed himself to be handcuffed and led after d’Artagnan toward the stairs. 

There was a scuffling sound from above, followed by muffled voices – one of which d’Artagnan vaguely recognized. The shout of pain he definitely did – Aramis. Porthos jerked; another voice filtered down through the ceiling, Athos this time, and clearly pissed off. 

“Minor injury that had to be dealt with,” the man in the mask said. “Nothing of consequence.”

They were taken from the basement to the first floor, and then to the second floor. They passed an open door, and d’Artagnan got a glimpse of a Aramis and Athos standing by the window, straight-backed. Even from that distance he knew the look on Athos’s face, and it promised retribution in the most painful way possible. Aramis looked like hell, and his hands were cuffed in front of him instead of behind. 

“Keep moving,” someone growled, and he was shoved unceremoniously into the next room. Another bedroom, bare of anything that might be used to help their escape or become a weapon at any rate. There was even a closet, too, and d’Artagnan saw it shared a wall with Athos and Aramis. 

“Mind your manners, gentlemen, or one of you will be doing time in solitary,” the man with the mask said, pointing to the closet. It was only then that d’Artagnan noticed the padlock hanging innocently from a u-ring. 

The handcuffs came off. The men retreated, and the door to hallway swung shut. From the sound of it, it locked the same was as the closet. Porthos waited for the footsteps to fade before he went over to inspect the bed more closely.

“Shit, it’s bolted to the floor.”

“What were you going to do? Redecorate?” d’Artagnan asked, arms folded over his chest.

“Barricade the door.” Porthos sat on the mattress. “Well this is new.”

d’Artagnan flopped down next to him. “Never been kidnapped?”

“Never been held hostage in somebody’s bedroom before,” he clarified. His lip curled; from the décor it had once been a boy’s room. Blue paint, blue bedding, and a place where a desk and shelves had probably been. “It’s a nice change from dirty warehouses.”

“There is that.” d’Artagnan leaned back against the headboard and sighed. 

 

Team One had a list of enemies as long as Treville’s arm. That was only the four of them _together_. When he looked at them as individuals – especially Athos and Aramis – the list grew exhaustingly long. But it wouldn’t make sense for someone out to hurt one of them to take the individual in question, too. Which led Treville away from the idea that someone was after one of his boys and after himself. 

His own list of enemies was a bit shorter but much more dangerous. It was there he started looking. There were few choices for him, as most of the list was incarcerated, some had been shipped back to their home countries, and quite a few were dead. 

There were still, however, some to look into. 

“Anything, captain?” Etienne asked from the doorway. 

“A few names,” he said. 

“Which do you want us to investigate?” Etienne came forward and sat himself in one of the chairs in front of Treville’s desk. Something caught the corner of his eye and he looked up. There, on the ceiling, was a fleur-de-lis outlined in yellow pencils stuck in the ceiling tile.

“Athos,” Treville said with a smirk at Etienne’s expression. “I’ve been meaning to take it down but haven’t gotten around to it.”

Etienne didn’t quite know what to do with that, and took a moment to look at it. It was precise, even on all sides, and a definite work of art. 

“He sat in that chair, if I remember correctly,” he said. “And from the dirt on my latest reports he’d had his feet on my desk, too.”

Them were fightin’ words, but if anyone could get away with that bit of leeway it was Athos. 

Treville slid a piece of paper with a couple names scrawled on it across his desk toward Etienne. “Start with these. I’ll take the others. I shouldn’t have to tell you to be careful, but I’m already down a team and I can’t afford to lose another.”

Etienne nodded. “Yessir.”

He waited until Etienne left before looking at the names left on his own list. There, at the top, was one that still sent shivers down his spine: Jacques Morneau.

Ruthless. Remorseless. By far the most dangerous man Treville had ever come across. And coincidentally the one he’d never managed to catch, though when he did he wouldn’t see the light of day for a very, very long time. 

His gut told him who exactly had his men. Etienne would be irritated he’d been sent on a wild goose chase through Quebec City, but this was personal. And Treville would take care of it himself.

 

Athos told himself he was taking the seat closest to the door, all the better to put himself between it and Aramis. He was most definitely _not_ thinking it was also the furthest from the closet – with a fucking lock on it – and he rested his head back against the wall the bed was pressed against. Aramis sat next to him, head drooping occasionally onto Athos’s shoulder only for him to jerk awake again. His left arm lay in his lap; Athos knew from prior experience having a shoulder reset wasn’t a picnic. 

_”Sleep, Aramis,”_ Athos murmured in French. 

_”No. Escape.”_ His head hit Athos’s shoulder again and bounced back up. 

He rolled his eyes, waited for Aramis’s head to droop again, and held it there. _”I’m not going to leave you behind. We escape, we’ll do it together. I told you before you wouldn’t ever be forgotten again, and I meant it. Trust me.”_ He kept his tone calm, side-eyeing the window by the closet. There were bars on the outside of it, and unless they could find a way to get them off it wouldn’t be an option. 

Aramis struggled briefly; Athos held him easily.

_”Promise?”_

He whispered so quietly Athos nearly didn’t hear him. Keeping his fingers in the messy curls, he couldn’t help but backtrack what had gotten him to that point. Not the kidnapping, exactly, but the closeness he shared with these men. His point in a nutshell: Aramis’s head on his shoulder. 

There were times Athos couldn’t help but remember the man he’d been after his wife’s betrayal. He’d caged himself off from the world, content to drown his sorrows in whiskey, indulge in the odd fight, and on one memorable occasion he’d thrown his law degree across his corner office. He’d helped put away thieves and criminals before, but after Anne it didn’t seem to be enough. 

So he went looking for someplace he could pour his hurt and his rage into and still be on the right side of the law, even if it was a little bendy at times. He’d joined the SITRU, effectively becoming one of Treville’s Musketeers, and hadn’t looked back since. 

Well, not looked back in with the intent to _go_ back, but to see where he’d been. 

Still, he’d shuttered himself away in the self-imposed cage with the idea that if he couldn’t touch anybody then nobody could touch him and he wouldn’t lose anybody else. It hadn’t worked. Porthos had torn the door off his cage and left it up to him whether or not he’d come out. Given the time, and Porthos’s nature, Athos had done just that. 

Aramis hadn’t given him a choice. He’d dragged Athos kicking and biting into the world of touches and brought back the tactile nature Athos had been sure was gone forever. 

And by the time d’Artagnan had arrived, Athos had accepted they’d never let him willingly go back to his old lifestyle. He still didn’t know whether to be thankful or irritated.

_”Athos?”_

Athos kept his hand where it was, thumb stroking through Aramis’s soft hair. _”I promise, Aramis.”_

Aramis tucked his nose into the side of Athos’s neck and went limp. Athos had promised him, and Athos didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep. 

 

Boredom among the four of them was never a good thing. It led to fleur-de-lis made of pencils in ceiling tiles, bad attempts at cooking experiments in the break room kitchenette, impromptu dance contests to Lady Gaga and Ke$ha in the conference room, games of capture the flag throughout their floor with Nerf gun weapons – Aramis wasn’t given one, since he damn near always hit what he aimed at, and he and Porthos _still_ had yet to be defeated – and enough general mayhem for Treville to start thinking seriously about going to a doctor for blood pressure medication. 

Boredom coupled with captivity was asking for disaster. It was also begging for them to figure a way out of this mess without someone – another SITRU team – having to come riding in on a white horse to save the day. 

Needless to say, none of them four of them did the whole damsel-in-distress-and-waiting-to-be-rescued thing very well. 

After laying low and, for the most part, behaving, for a day and a half of forced captivity, Athos had come to several conclusions. The bathroom was tiny and down the hallway, requiring an escort of one armed, masked guard but without handcuffs. Food was delivered twice a day, along with cups of water. Two guards were tasked with it, though from what Athos could see only one was armed. Handcuffs were a always threatened if one of them so much as moved too fast, though both he and Aramis understood the importance of having unrestricted movement. 

Also, the walls were rather thin. Not enough to hear exact words, but enough to know when d’Artagnan and Porthos were in conversation. 

Aramis had done a thorough circuit of the room once he’d gotten his head on straight and determined there wasn’t any sort of security camera anywhere. It was around that time when he also stated the décor – walls painted pink with yellow flowers – was beginning to grow on him. Athos didn’t bother thinking he’d gone around the bend. 

_”I hope somebody’s feeding my cat,”_ Athos said, once again sitting on the bed with his back against the wall. 

_”Constance will take care of Dumas.”_ Aramis ran his fingers through his hair. He hadn’t reached the stage where he could easily smell himself, though he was starting to get the urge to shower. He listened to the low hum of voices on the other side of the wall and asked, _”What do you suppose they’re talking about?”_

Athos shrugged. _”Cooking?”_

_**”Cooking?**_ ” He twisted around to look incredulously at Athos. _”Seriously? d’Artagnan burns water.”_

_”He asked Porthos for advice so he could help Constance.”_ Even after having significant time to process the thought, Athos still didn’t know what to do with it. True her husband was often gone and it was only her and d’Artagnan in the house, but she was still a married woman.

Athos forced himself not to go there. 

Aramis pounded a rhythm on the wall between them and the other two, biting his lip to hide a smile. It became the first real grin Athos had seen in days when someone – Porthos, probably – hammered back. 

“You got any ideas on how to get us out of here?” Aramis asked in English.

Something in Athos’s chest uncoiled. “Funnily enough, I think I do.” He looked at Aramis, his smile more predatory than anything else.

 

Athos looked over his shoulder at where Aramis sat on the bed doing his best to look relaxed. There was a lingering fear hidden behind an outwardly bored expression, and he knew it was from that primal fear of being left behind again. Of being left for dead. 

May Marsac rot in hell, wherever he was. And if Athos ever got his hands on him, well, he’d pray for death. 

He gave a reassuring twist of his mouth before schooling his features and hammering on the locked door to the hallway. 

Aramis drew his legs up and balanced his forearms on his knees, mindful of his bruises. He was a startling array of purples, blues, greens and yellows from his trip down the stairs of his apartment building, and Athos had all but demanded to see them to assess the damage. The best one, in his opinion, was the one crawling along his hairline and down the right side of his face to his jaw. 

Athos thumped on the door again, and took a half step back when he heard footsteps. He hunched over when he heard the lock click open and the door swung in, one arm protectively over his midsection. 

“What?” the man demanded. 

“Don’t feel well. Bathroom?”

He looked between Aramis on the bed and Athos’s apparent agony. “Can’t I just get you a bucket?”

“He’s a sympathy puker,” Athos said, motioning over his shoulder. “You want twice the mess to clean up?”

Aramis was, of course, _not_ one to throw up because someone else did. That was d’Artagnan. The idiot in the mask didn’t need to know that.

Evidently the idea of cleaning up twice the amount of vomit was the deal breaker. “Christ, no. Come on.” He looked hard at Aramis – who didn’t so much as twitch, though he had gone pale – and ushered Athos into the hallway. The door swung shut; Aramis tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and let out a shuddering breath. 

Once in the bathroom – which didn’t lock from the inside – Athos surveyed the toilet. It had been a long time since he’d done this, and it didn’t get any easier. He took a deep breath, and stuck his fingers in his mouth far enough back to trigger his gag reflex. He hurled up the previous evening’s dinner of canned soup and stale crackers. 

The moan was only partially faked. He hated throwing up. It was why he’d found that fine line between drinking enough to pass out and sleep without dreams and drinking enough to throw up what felt like everything he’d ever eaten in his life. 

He rinsed his mouth out with water from the sink, and thumped the wall. 

“You okay in there, man?” came through the doorway. 

Athos moaned again, banged on the sink, and straightened. He’d need to be fast and accurate.

“Dude – you okay?”

The door opened enough for the man to slip through; Athos threw his full body weight against it when he was halfway in, and aimed for the head. The man in the mask went down like a rock. He pulled him all the way into the bathroom and searched him for anything useful. A gun and a set of keys were all he turned up, and Athos felt a note of satisfaction at locking the bastard in there. 

He crept back down the hallway to the room Aramis was still in and fumbled for the right key. When it finally opened, he poked his head in to find Aramis in much the same position as he’d left him. 

“Aramis!” he hissed.

“’Bout time,” he said, scrambling off the bed and moving with cat-like grace across the hardwood floor. He’d spent enough time in the room to know all the places it creaked and knew where to avoid putting his feet. 

Athos, while very proud of his own shooting ability, knew Aramis was their sniper for a reason. He handed him the gun butt first with a wry, “Did I mention this has to count?”

Aramis’s eyebrows rose. “Thanks for the reminder.”

They went back into the hallway; Aramis covered his back while Athos unlocked the door to d’Artagnan and Porthos’s room. He stuck his head in only to hastily withdraw it from Porthos’s haymaker with a hissed, “It’s us, you idiot!”

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “Thought you were the bad guys.”

d’Artagnan snorted, and got in line behind Porthos as they made their way toward the stairs. It didn’t seem like great odds, four against who knew how many with only one gun, but they’d faced worst and come out better. 

Not entirely in one piece, perhaps, but they’d still come out on the other side. 

“I have to fire this and the cavalry is going to come running,” Aramis murmured in Athos’s ear, the one that didn’t have a gun barrel uncomfortably close to it.

“You have to fire that and there’s a good chance I’ll go deaf.”

“Then we’ll never have to listen to you say ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that’ again,” Porthos muttered. He reached out and tugged lightly on the neck of Aramis’s t-shirt. “’Mis, the fuck happened to you?”

“Fell down some stairs,” he said crisply. 

They were halfway down the stairs when they heard, “Sean? You still up there?”

Aramis looked briefly toward the ceiling before sliding around Athos to front of their little caravan. He took a deep breath, tuned out the others behind him like he did on those missions when he had to, and waited. Soon enough his target came into view. He saw the moment when the man in the mask saw him. He squeezed the trigger before the man had a chance to say anything; the lifeless body dropped, tumbling down the stairs in a way that made Aramis’s own body ache in remembrance. 

A gunshot in a house? They might as well have put up a neon sign saying _Prisoners Escaping This Way_.

“Run!” Athos shoved him hard on the shoulder and the four of them barreled down to the first floor, vaulting the body and puddle of blood at the bottom. d’Artagnan paused long enough to find the gun on him, chambering a round even as he caught up with the other three.

Only, Athos didn’t have a clue where to go from there. 

“We split up,” he said. He looked between d’Artagnan and Aramis, both of them wearing grim expressions that were a far cry from the normal easy smiles and jokes. “Shoot to kill.”

The house was bigger than it looked. He and Aramis crept through a formal dining room; the gun in Aramis’s hand barked again and another man dropped. He heard an exchange from somewhere else in the house, followed by yelling. 

A sixth sense that had kept Athos alive in the urban battlefield for years had him hauling Aramis against the side of a china cabinet and out of the sightline of the doorway moments before gunfire tore through the space they’d been standing. Aramis drew a quick breath, murmured something indecipherable, and popped around the corner. One shot, one thump. 

They made it to the kitchen. Aramis kept an eye on the way they’d come while Athos went to open the door. 

It wouldn’t open. 

Panic tried to claw its way up his throat. 

“Athos!” Aramis hissed, picking off those too stupid to not stay under better cover. “What the hell is the hold up?”

“It’s – it’s stuck.” Athos looked closer. Stuck was an understatement; the damn thing had been nailed shut. 

“Then unstick it!”

Athos grabbed a chair from the table and hoped it was as well put together as it looked. “Mind your head.”

“What?” Aramis glanced behind him, ducked on reflex, and fired another shot at an unfortunate soul who gave him enough of a target. Glass showered the pair of them, and Athos used the chair as a step stool to get through the broken window. Aramis followed him gracelessly, mentally counting bullets. 

They took off across the yard, heading for the wall that divided the lawn and the woods beyond. There was more gunfire to the right, and Athos looked over to see d’Artagnan and Porthos leading their own merry chase. He swerved away from them, intent on keeping distance between them, and Aramis fell in step next to him. 

The closer they got to the wall, the more Athos began to think they were screwed. 

“What the fuck kind of place is this?” Aramis asked between breaths, staring at the twelve-foot high retaining wall in front of him. 

Athos shook his head, too focused on getting his breathing under control to trust himself to talk. 

Aramis tucked the gun in the back of his jeans and crouched, patting his thigh. “Come on. Up you go.”

“No,” he said. “You’re taller.”

“Athos.” Aramis could see more men filing out of the house and it struck something primal within him. 

“You get up, and then you pull me up. Deal?”

He looked like he was going to argue when he heard a different kind of sound, something heavier. “That’s not a normal gun.”

“What?” Athos braced himself. “Aramis. Let’s go.”

Something hard impacted the wall to their right; Aramis started off again, tugging Athos along with him as a masked man burst from the bushes. Athos dodged a tree and heard an answering bark of gunfire from Aramis, followed by a cry of pain. 

The next sound he heard didn’t sound as satisfying. Someone was literally gasping for breath. Athos peered around a tree trunk and his eyes went wide – d’Artagnan was on his knees, a rope around his throat. Porthos was nowhere to be found, which meant they’d gotten unwillingly separated. 

“Where’d he go, boy? Where’s your big friend, huh? Where is he?”

Aramis steadied his feet, took a breath, and aimed. A heartbeat later both the man and d’Artagnan dropped. Athos rushed forward, nudging the body with his toe to make sure it didn’t move though he needn’t have – there was a neat hole in the middle of his forehead. 

d’Artagnan sat up and flung the rope away from him, leaning as much into Athos as he dared while he got his breath back. There was a nasty mark on his neck though it didn’t appear to be swelling. 

“Aramis!” he croaked.

Athos turned in time to watch Aramis take three consecutive bean bag hits – two to the chest and one to the lower back. 

“Run, now,” Athos said, shoving d’Artagnan in the opposite direction and starting for Aramis. He kept his arms up and his body between him and d’Artagnan’s weaving figure.

Aramis hadn’t moved.

“On your knees,” the man in the mask yelled. “On your knees, now!”

Athos took a few more steps closer to Aramis before kneeling, interlacing his fingers behind his head. He glanced at Aramis, watched fingers tighten their hold on the gun, and smirked.

“You think this is funny, do you?”

“Hysterical,” Athos said dryly.

Aramis rolled and shot in one fluid motion. It wasn’t as clean a hit as he would have liked but it did the trick. There was no next shot, and he dropped the gun in the grass next to him. 

“Fuck, those rounds hurt,” he groaned, letting Athos help him to his feet. 

Another bean bag round kicked up grass and dirt by his shoes. Athos looked up and around, his heart sinking. They were surrounded. 

 

There were more than a few black eyes and swollen jaws all around by the time the four of them were confined to the second floor of the house again. d’Artagnan looked a little worse for wear, his breathing ragged, and Porthos sported a bloody nose. 

“You’ve cost me quite a bit of manpower, gentlemen,” said a voice from further on downt he hall. “Nine dead and as many or more injured.” A man with a military haircut and an impeccable suit strode forward. “I don’t appreciate it.” He stopped in front of Athos and Aramis. “I don’t appreciate defiance, and you were told if you couldn’t behave yourself one of you would be spending some time in solitary.”

Athos felt his heart quicken. 

“I don’t care which, just make sure one goes. A few days ought to be sufficient.” He disappeared down the hallway again, and Athos was momentarily distracted because he could have sworn he’d seen him somewhere before. 

He was by the bed before he realized where they were steering him. Aramis, much quicker on the uptake, fought like a man possessed. 

“Aramis!” Athos yelled, straining at the men holding him to get to his friend. 

“Athos!” He struggled to move, pinned belly-down on the floor with his cheek mashed against the hardwood. Still, he could see the needle coming, and he wanted none of it. “Fuck – get off me!”

“Wait!” His tone ensured he had everyone’s attention. Athos took a deep breath, looked between the syringe and Aramis’s wild eyes, and the closet, and knew the only way he was going to get through this was if Aramis was in his right mind on this side of the door. “I’ll go.”

“Athos,” Aramis whispered. “No.”

Athos ignored him, jerked himself free of the men around him, and stared at the dark maw of his second-worst fear. He backed himself in, taking one last long look at Aramis.

The door swung shut, the padlock snapped closed, and Athos sucked in a short, hard breath. His legs went out from under him, there was a rushing in his ears, and there was nothing but blackness around him. Nothing but blackness, and a space too small to sustain life. 

There was a scrambling on the other side of the door. Athos didn’t hear it. He didn’t hear Aramis’s frantic calls for him, telling him to breathe. 

Instead, Athos used what precious oxygen he had to start screaming. And once he did he couldn’t stop.

 

There weren’t many associates of Jacques Morneau who would willingly admit to it. It had taken a long night of burning eyes, many cups of coffee, and copious amounts of swearing for Treville to even begin to know where to look. But once he began to connect the dots it came together fairly easily. 

The first dot was that most of his known associates had been spotted in and around Quebec City in some way. The second was that, after a certain point, there weren’t any sightings, which told Treville they weren’t based somewhere in the city itself. 

He waded through hours of CCTV footage from grocery stores and other public places, hoping to spot a semi-familiar face. Around mid-afternoon on the second day, he struck gold.

Arlow Sanderson, an American who had been with Morneau since his beginning, turned up repeatedly. His most recent outing was to find and buy numerous amounts of medical supplies. Gauze. Bandages. 

Treville had the sinking feeling they weren’t _for_ his boys, but rather for the aftermath _of_ his boys. There would, of course, be consequences for their actions, and as they hadn’t turned up bloody and leaning on each other at the Garrison, he could only assume they hadn’t been successful. 

Arlow, while competent at killing people, wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. It was easy to follow him through Quebec City and onto 73. He made sure to keep his distance – and a couple of cars between him and Arlow – and followed him through a fairly secluded area. Arlow turned off the main road toward a compound with a high retaining wall around it, guarded by men in black uniforms at the gate. 

_This is where they are,_ he thought as he drove by so as not to be suspicious. He had a location. He had a name. Now he needed to know how many men were inside so he could take back what was his.

And he _would_ be taking back what was his.

 

It was dark and there was someone murmuring in the distance. Athos blinked his eyes open and while the world didn’t right itself, it helped when he pushed himself into a sitting position. He leaned against the wall, mindful of his breathing, and the low voice he could hear solidified into words. 

Aramis, somewhere very close by the other side of the closet door, was reciting something. As he was reciting it in Spanish Athos had little idea of what it might be. Judging from the tone and the pauses, he guessed it was either psalms or poetry. 

“Ar – “ he cleared his throat, taken aback by the hoarseness of his own voice. “Aramis.”

The murmuring stopped and there was a sound suspiciously like metal on wood before Aramis asked, “Athos?”

If he focused on Aramis’s voice he could almost forget the walls were trying to close in and suffocate him. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”

“Thank God.” There was the scraping sound again. “I figured you’d had to have passed out and – are you okay, now? Well, okay as you can be?”

Athos let his head thunk back against the closet wall and said, “Yeah. I think. How long was I out?”

“I dunno. How do you feel?”

Bone fucking tired, for one, is how he felt. But Aramis would only worry if he said that, so he shrugged. “Okay. I feel…okay.”

“Athos. I’m sorry.”

He shuffled around in the little space – which he tried not to think about – and rested his feet on the door, arms draped over his bent knees. “Why are you sorry?” It was then he noticed the light that should have been spilling in under the door was absent. He suspected Aramis was lying in front of it, as close to Athos as he could get with the door still between them. 

“I should have listened to you by the wall. If I’d just – if I had kept my mouth shut and followed instructions then one of us might have gotten out of here to get help.”

Trust Aramis to guilt trip himself over something beyond his control. It would have been comical if he hadn’t been so earnest about it. 

“Aramis d’Herblay,” Athos said, one hand tugging at his hair. “This is not your fault. I’m pretty damn sure we’d have been caught again, anyway. Or we’d have died out in those woods. Unless you know where the hell we are?” He thought for a moment, in the ensuing silence, he might have been off the mark and way over the line for the “in the woods” comment. Still, while Aramis carried as many different demons as Athos did, he was, above all else, still a soldier with a soldier’s practicalities. With no compass, no phone, and no gear to help him weather the elements, the better course of action was to stay inside and hope for another escape chance. Or for rescue.

“No, Athos,” Aramis finally said. “I don’t. And I didn’t escape one forest hell to die in another.”

Athos smiled. _There_ was Aramis’s fighting spirit. 

“Athos?”

“Aramis?” He rested his head back.

“I didn’t say anything,” Aramis said from his side of the door.

“Athos? Can you hear me?”

He turned sideways, putting Aramis on his right and the other wall on his left. “d’Artagnan?”

“You can hear me?” came d’Artagnan’s voice through the wall. “Has Aramis stopped screaming?”

“He wasn’t screaming,” Athos said, wincing at the scratch against his throat. “That was me.” No sense in worrying Porthos when there wasn’t anything to be done about it. “But I’ve got my head on again.”

“Well that’s good.”

Athos snorted. What would be good would be a stiff drink or five, a loaded gun, and free potshots at the asshole holding them captive. Speaking of said asshole, now that he had time to think – and there was an irony there, wasn’t there – he tried to remember where he’d seen that face before. 

“Athos?”

It was like being at work. How the hell was he supposed to get anything filed for Treville with d’Artagnan on one side of him and Aramis on the other? Still, Aramis sounded as raw as Athos felt, and that wasn’t a good thing. 

“Aramis.”

“Do you know who has us?”

He very nearly did. “Almost. He’s familiar, but I can’t place a name with a face.” But when he did, he’d be able to figure out what the bastard wanted. Then he could get his team the hell out of there.

 

Most days Constance wished for quiet. Between d’Artagnan’s motor mouth, Aramis and Porthos’s antics, and Athos’s well-timed snarky jabs, there was hardly a moment’s peace in the office. 

Now it was unnerving. 

She missed them. She missed their noise, their spirit, and the fact they were undeniably _alive_. They lived in the moment, tried not to worry about the past – considering most of them had childhoods and adolescences they’d rather forget, she wouldn’t want to live there, too – and always, always tried to make her day a little brighter whether on purpose or accident. Office memos from them came with doodles in the corners, bits of poetry in a language that usually wasn’t English, and on really slow days someone usually reminded Athos his go-to dance move was something resembling the starting of a weedwhacker. 

Not to mention her house was too damn empty without both her husband and d’Artagnan. 

Her email pinged. 

She didn’t recognize the sender, and there wasn’t anything in the subject line. There were, however, video links. Her stomach sank, and she called out, “Captain! You might want to come here!”

It felt like déjà vu with Treville leaning over her desk as she clicked on the first one. It was short, only about a minute and a half. Porthos sat in a metal folding chair, hands in his lap, and stared not at the camera but at a point to the side of it. 

_”We’re going to ask you some questions and you’re going to answer them.”_

Porthos’s eyebrows rose. _”Porthos du Vallon, badge number two-five-one-one-nine.”_

_”We know that. We know your address, too.”_

He shrugged. _”Porthos du Vallon, badge number two-five-one-one.”_ He finally looked at the camera, gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile despite the bruises and dried blood on his face, and then looked back at his captor. _”Next question?_

The video cut off then. d’Artagnan was a near exact copy. His badge number was different, of course, and Constance hadn’t realized what she’d thought was his first name was actually his last. 

Athos’s got a small smirk out of Treville.

_”We have some questions for you.”_

Athos looked at his captor with his trademark _I don’t give a fuck_ expression and said, like he was ordering coffee, _”Go fuck yourself.”_

_”That’s not going to help you.”_

He gave a one-sided shrug. _”Olivier d’Athos de la Fere, badge number three-zero-zero-six-one.”_ He paused, held up his middle finger, and added, _”And go fuck yourself.”_

There wasn’t a video for Aramis. Rather than make her reassured, it made Constance very, very nervous. Treville seemed to share the same sentiment, and he asked her to forward him the email. He would spend the next few hours going over them with a fine tooth comb, hoping for any more clues. Still, his first plan seemed like the best plan, though it wasn’t something he would allow anyone to help with. 

What he’d forgotten about, as he locked his office for the weekend at the end of the day on Friday, was how observant Constance was. She waited for him, leaning against her own desk with her arms crossed over her chest. 

“You know where they are, don’t you?” she asked outright.

“Yes.” He didn’t see the point in lying to her. 

“How long are you going to let them stay there?”

“I’m bringing them home by Monday,” he said, more a promise than anything else. 

“Good.” Constance gathered up her bag and made sure she had her car keys. She gave him a last hard look he didn’t need help interpreting, and left him to it. 

The _bring them back or don’t come back at all_ hung tangibly between them.

 

Athos couldn’t stand to have the closet door open even though he’d been released after two long days in it. He sat on the bed, as far away from the innocent part of the bedroom as possible, and thought of wide open spaces and endless sky. It helped him keep his breathing even. 

His hostage video had been a farce. Like he’d been taught, he repeated only his name and badge number. He’d been tempted to tell he man operating the camera exactly where and how to shove it, though that might have crossed a line, and he was rather used to not having to wear handcuffs. 

Unlike Aramis, who’s wrists were being rubbed raw to the point where he’d start to bleed soon if someone didn’t loosen them. 

And speaking of Aramis – the door opened and the younger man was all but thrown back inside. It slammed shut, and Aramis walked on shaky legs toward the bed but didn’t sit. There was an odd note to his breathing, and he swayed where he stood. 

“Aramis?” Athos climbed off the bed to get a better look. “What did they do to you?”

“I wouldn’t – I didn’t say anything,” he said, slurring the ends of his words together. His eyes were wide, pupils blown so completely there was very little of his brown iris left to be seen. “I wouldn’t say anything. He knew – “ He closed his eyes and swayed. Shaking his head, he forced himself to walk toward the window, twisting his fingers together. “He knew about…the training exercise. SAVOY.” He looked helplessly at Athos. “I didn’t say anything.”

“I know,” Athos said. “I know you wouldn’t.”

Aramis leaned forward and almost over-balanced; Athos caught him by the shoulders and propped him up. “No. I mean – I didn’t say _anything_.”

“Nothing? No name, no badge number?” He pushed Aramis’s unruly hair off his sweaty forehead. “Okay. That’s good. That’s okay.”

“Noooo…” Aramis shook his head wildly. “They wanted me to remember.” He flipped his forearm over to show Athos the fresh bruises and needle mark. “I don’t wanna remember.” He pushed away from the other man to resume his haphazard pacing. “I don’t wanna sleep. Don’t wanna ‘member.”

Athos swore then and there that every one of those bastards holding them hostage would die. Slowly and painfully, with their twisted leader as the last one. 

Aramis rammed his shoulder into the wall with a wince, his legs visibly shaking. “’Thos, keep me ‘wake.”

“Of course. Come here.” He crossed the room and cupped his hands under Aramis’s elbows. “Let’s walk. Come on, ‘Mis, let’s take a walk.”

They started their first slow circuit around the small room. Athos walked backward, making sure to keep eye contact with Aramis at all times. Aramis staggered like he was drunk, and Athos found he did better if there was something auditory for him to latch onto. He was too far gone to completely understand what was being said to him, but he knew – and followed – Athos’s voice like a beacon even when his legs wanted to give out. 

Athos, having had to memorize what felt like a shit ton of useless information at the time, worked his way through the court cases he’d had to look up during the latter parts of getting his law degree. He didn’t remember all the details, and when he spent too long searching his memory for something he couldn’t readily find and Aramis’s attention started to waver, he moved on to the next one. When he finished with court cases he moved on to Canadian criminal law procedures. 

He kept them moving. He kept them awake, knowing without Aramis having to say it that if he went to sleep he’d wake up back in the snowy woods with no way easy way to get himself back to the present. 

By the time the next morning rolled around and an armed, masked guard was dropping off a tray of unappetizing soggy cereal, Athos and Aramis were still more or less waltzing around the room. Literally. Athos was humming something from _Swan Lake_ and had taught Aramis how to waltz sometime around two in the morning when Canadian law wasn’t cutting it anymore and Aramis’s chin was repeatedly dropping to his chest. 

They ignored the guard and the food. Athos also ignored that Aramis’s form wasn’t as proper as it should have been as he was still handcuffed.

“You’ve done well, ‘Mis,” Athos murmured, pulling Aramis across the floor. “You’ve done so well.” He wrapped a hand around Aramis’s belt at the back of his pants and hauled him up a little straighter. 

Aramis flailed before he got his grip back on Athos’s shirt front again. He stumbled through the next series of steps. As it was he was totally unprepared for a thump to come from the direction of the closet. He jumped about a foot in the air and spun, putting himself between whatever it was and Aramis. Aramis rested his forehead on Athos’s shoulder, struggling to keep his feet.

The closet door inched open and d’Artagnan’s grinning face appeared in the small gap. He held up a butter knife and said, “Hi, boys. Miss me?”

 

“You stole a butter knife and hacked at the sheet rock with it?” Athos was appropriately skeptical, though d’Artagnan was grinning like a loon. 

“That’s the great thing about sheet rock,” Porthos said, one arm draped casually around a dozing Aramis and the other lying in his lap. “The paper’s the really protective bit. Once you get past that it crumbles.”

“So we kicked, stabbed, and did whatever we had to and made a doorway,” d’Artagnan said proudly. “Blends right in the with the wall in the shadows. Like it’s not even there.”

Athos had to hand it to them, they’d been onto something when they’d stolen what little they could. Little being three forks, four butter knives, and a spoon or two. What they had planned to do with it was anyone’s guess, but it seemed, in retrospect, a hell of a lot more productive than what he and Aramis had come up with. 

Then again, he and Aramis had been mutually keeping each other sane, and there was something to be said for that. 

“Did you get a good luck at the guy in the suit the day we were captured again?” Athos asked. 

Porthos shook his head. 

“It’s that jackass from Toronto,” Aramis muttered, moving his head just enough so he could look easily at Athos and d’Artagnan. “Morneau.”

“Thank you.” Athos could finally get his brain to stop trying to come up with a name and focus on something else instead. “Not one of our enemies, but one of Treville’s.”

d’Artagnan leaned more heavily against the wall. “You’re going to have to explain that one.”

“I’m not giving you the details, and the only reason I know them is because it was our office assigned to the case,” Athos said, secretly pleased with the way Aramis seemed to sit up a little straighter. He was a sucker for any story from Athos’s time in the prosecution office, and this happened to be one of them. “Jacques Morneau was a wealthy businessman from Toronto, who also happened to be dealing on the side in sex trafficking. Treville, when he was a Musketeer, was assigned to that case. Shit hit the fan, and during what should have been an easy take down, Morneau’s son was killed.”

“By Treville?” Porthos asked, stretching his legs out in front of him into the middle of their loose circle. 

“Yes. By Treville.” He looked at d’Artagnan and added, “This is why Treville’s such a stickler that the charges stick. There was a fuck up somewhere in the line, and Morneau walked with a lesser sentence than he should have. Before he went in to serve his time in prison, he put out one last hit.”

“On Treville?” d’Artagnan asked.

“Meant for the captain, yes, but that wasn’t who was hit. Coralyn had taken Treville’s car to go get groceries that night, since she was waiting for her husband to change the brakes on hers. She was at a stop light when another vehicle rolled up and opened fire.” Athos took a deep breath, well aware this wasn’t common knowledge, and quite possibly a breach of attorney-client privilege. “She died from blood loss in the ER, bled out before they could get her to surgery.”

Aramis made a sound deep in his throat; Porthos cupped a hand around the back of Aramis’s skull and left it there. 

“Treville knows who did it,” he continued. “But he can’t prove it. What he can prove, however, is that Morneau’s wife is in the country illegally. She gets deported back to Bosnia, and Treville starts going after any and all of Morneau’s other accomplices. Chances are the men in the masks are what’s left of Morneau’s men, the ones that aren’t in prison and aren’t dead. I’m impressed he has this many, too. Treville’s been making it a habit to put them away for a long time.”

“Except Morneau,” d’Artagnan said. “Because he’s running around the countryside kidnapping Musketeers.”

“And looking for a way to draw out the captain,” Porthos added. “Which is why he took the four of us.”

d’Artagnan drew his knees to his chest. “But why take all four of us? Why risk having to grab four men instead of, say, one or two?”

“Because he knew we’d come looking for each other,” Athos said. “He knew whoever he didn’t take would join with Treville, and the game would be over before it could begin.”

“He wants Treville here,” Aramis said quietly. “He wants to make this personal. That’s why he hasn’t killed us yet. He’s waiting for the captain.”

“Well he’s in for a rude awakening then, isn’t it he?” Porthos’s grin had an edge to it. “You know how Treville is when you take his stapler? Imagine what he’ll be like to the person who took his best team. And hurt them, too.” He’d managed to scrub most of the dried blood off his face, though he was bruised in places no one should ever be bruised. 

“Speaking of that,” Athos said in the same airy tone of voice he used when sweet talking the requisitions officer at the Garrison, “I want to look at your back. I saw you take that rubber round back there.”

“I’m one big bruise,” Aramis said. “Is one more really going to make a difference?”

“It does when it’s near your kidneys,” he pointed out, motioning for Aramis to turn around. “I’ll be quick and I won’t poke it.”

“You said that last time and you jabbed your finger at it like you would the Garrison Coke machine.” He shuffled up onto his knees with a groan and presented his back to Athos. 

“That machine and I have a love hate relationship.” Athos gently lifted the hem of Aramis’s dirty t-shirt and sucked in a hard breath through his teeth. “Jesus, Aramis. How long have you been pissing blood?”

Aramis ran his hands through his hair – it was better to do simultaneous motions than attempt different tasks – and sighed. “Since we were taken. It’s not a lot, though.”

Porthos at least waited until Aramis was settled against him once more before launching into a lecture on the effects of internal bleeding and kidney damage. Aramis, good sport that he was, pretended to listen at least in the beginning.

 

Arlow was a lover, not a fighter. He left most of the brute strength to the others, and preferred to use his mind to get his ends. 

It didn’t work this time.

He needed some clean clothes from his apartment in Quebec City, and he’d barely clicked the light on when he was pressed face-first into the wall by the door. A foot kicked his ankles apart, a forearm lay across the back of his neck, and in the silence all he heard was his own semi-frantic breathing and the sound of a knife leaving a sheath.

“Hello, Arlow,” a voice whispered, intimate as a lover, in his ear. “How are you tonight? And how his our mutual friend, Jacques Morneau?”

“M-Morneau?” he squeaked. “I haven’t seen Jacques in – in years!” He froze; the very sharp point of the previously mentioned knife rested against his Adam’s apple. 

“Don’t lie to me, Arlow. You’ve been doing business with Jacques for months now, haven’t you? Ever since he got back from Vancouver. He pulled you out of the gutter in Buffalo, didn’t he? Said he had one last job?”

The arm lifted and Arlow was spun in place. He looked up wide-eyed at the man in front of him, dressed all in black with a leather coat on, and couldn’t help but glance at the wicked knife in his right hand. 

“You’re that – that Musketeer that killed Petr,” Artlow muttered. 

“He had two choices,” Treville said calmly, his left hand palm-down on Arlow’s chest to feel his racing heart. “He could have come quietly and done his time. He preferred to run.” He raised the knife and rested the point gently below Arlow’s eye. “I rarely miss what I aim at, though my hand has been known to slip.” The blade faltered; a dot of blood appeared on Arlow’s pale skin. “Where are my men?”

“I don’t know.” He tipped his head to the side, trying to get away from the knife. 

“Try again, Arlow. You’re failing your first test quite miserably.” He inched the point toward Arlow’s eye. “Where are my men?”

“At a rented house in the country,” Arlow said in a rush. “In Petr Morneau’s name.”

Treville smiled, though there was little warmth in it. “How many men on premises?”

Arlow shook his head as best he could given the circumstances. “I don’t – I don’t know.”

“Take a guess, Arlow,” he said, trailing his knife down the man’s cheek to the underside of his jaw. “And don’t include yourself. You won’t be going back.”

He whimpered as the words sunk in, and Treville could see the literal effort it took him to mentally count. He finally stammered out, “Fifteen. Including Jacques. He stays there.” He paused, and then hastily added, “Nineteen. Including your four, nineteen.”

“Anything special to get me through the gate?” Treville asked. 

Arlow shook his head. “No. No, just – just take my car. Everybody wears masks. They won’t – they won’t know you aren’t me until…they won’t know.”

He smiled slowly. “I have a good place for you to wait, too, Arlow. Just so you don’t miss anything.” He fisted one hand in the front of the man’s cheap sweater and bodily dragged him from the apartment. It was long past time to end things properly. 

 

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Athos asked, cradling Aramis’s hand between both of his. 

“What’s one more bruise in the grand scheme of things?” he said flippantly. “I need my hands free.” He dipped his head and Athos obligingly shoved the collar of his t-shirt into his mouth. Aramis got enough of it between his molars to not cause himself dental issues, and nodded sharply. 

Athos swiftly but surely dislocated Aramis’s thump with a soft crack. Aramis’s shoulders curled forward toward Athos as the older man slipped the handcuff over his mangled hand. 

“On three,” Athos murmured, reversing his grip. “One, two – “ He shoved, and the thumb went back in as easily as it went out. 

Aramis kicked him hard in the thigh, easy enough to do with him sitting on the bed and Athos kneeling between his legs, and spat out his t-shirt to mutter, “What the hell happened to three?”

“You would have tensed up.” He smoothed his thumb carefully over the sensitive skin near the place on Aramis’s wrist that had been rubbed raw. “Better?”

“Much,” he said, easing both hands into fists. “I’d get away from me before I punch you in the face.”

Athos grinned, and wisely retreated a few steps. Aramis took a deep breath, looked at Athos, and asked, “Ready?”

“It’ll be Oscar worthy.”

Aramis snorted. “Like you could act that well.”

“I’ve been in a play or two during my time,” Athos said defensively.

He stared incredulously. “You, Mr. I’m Drunk But It’s Still Not Enough to Make Me Dance Willingly on a Pool Table? You got on a stage and performed for people?”

“I got my ass on that pool table. Watch and learn, Aramis.” Athos, mindful of Aramis’s stare drilling into his back, stalked across the room and banged on the door. “Help! Help, he’s gonna kill me! He’s gonna – help!” He broke off into a serious of chokes and gags, kicking the door with his heel as though someone had him shoved up against it. 

The sound of footsteps was audible. 

“See?” Athos said as Aramis took a position on the blind side of the door. “Oscar worthy.”

“You start performing Broadway show tunes, then we’ll talk,” he muttered. 

“Those are the Tony awards.” Athos waited for the door to slam open a masked man to barrel inside. Once he did, Athos wrapped his arms around his neck and kicked his legs out from under him. A few hits of his head against the floor had him out cold, and he looked over to see Aramis lowering another body to the hardwood. 

Until a certain point, and then Aramis dropped him. Athos didn’t blame him. 

“Stay here,” Athos said, chambering a round in the gun he’d stolen off the man on the floor. “If need be we’ll defend this as our ground.”

Aramis nodded. 

Gunshots and screams echoed through the house from the first floor. Athos’s attention swung from Porthos and d’Artagnan’s door to the stairs to the opposite end of the hallway to make sure nothing snuck up on him. One moron tried. Athos made him pay with his life. 

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. 

Something hit the gun out of his hand before he could turn properly. Athos staggered back into the door to get out of the way of a vicious haymaker, and the firearm was too far out of his reach to be useful. The key was still in the padlock on the door, and Porthos and d’Artagnan were waiting as backup on the other side. 

There was a single gunshot – the man in the expensive suit collapsed, bleeding onto the hallway floor from a neat hole between his eyes. Athos rested back against the door and looked over at Aramis in the doorway to the other bedroom, gun raised and his finger on the trigger. 

Movement on the stairs drew both their attentions; Athos saw a man in black, bloody knife in one hand and gun in the other. But men for hire didn’t suddenly just turn on themselves, and he’d _seen_ the set of those shoulders before. 

“Aramis! Wait!” he shouted, scrambling to his feet and putting himself in a position he never thought he would – between the barrel of gun Aramis was holding with deadly intent and the man’s target. “Wait.”

“What the _fuck_ are you doing, Athos?” Aramis demanded. 

“Because that’s not who you think it is, okay?” He held his arms out, palms up in a gesture of peace and good faith, and approached his teammate. “That’s not what you think. Trust me?” He was close enough now that if Aramis pulled the trigger he’d be dead, one round center mass. 

Aramis swallowed audibly, and allowed Athos to take the gun from him. He watched with curiosity – and a healthy dose of fear he’d later deny – as the man in black tucked the gun in the waistband of his pants and reached slowly for his mask. It revealed a familiar face when it was gone, and Aramis’s legs went out from under him. 

“Boys,” Treville said. “Where are the others?”

It was then they became aware of the unholy racket going on behind the closed door of the second bedroom. Athos, being the closest, finally managed to get the padlock undone, and Porthos and d’Artagnan spilled into the hallway in a tangle of arms and elbows. 

Treville ran the hand not covered in blood over his face in fond exasperation.

 

Athos heaved himself into the front passenger seat of the black SUV Treville had at his disposal and settled in with a sigh. With the house comfortably burning itself to the ground behind them, they set off for Quebec City again. He turned around, unnerved by the silence in the backseat, and the corners of his mouth twitched upward.

Aramis sat in the middle, bracketed by d’Artagnan on one side and Porthos on the other. He was also the only one awake and staring straight ahead. Porthos was snoring into his unruly hair, and d’Artagnan was drooling on his shoulder. 

“Aramis asleep?” Treville asked softly when Athos turned around again.

“Hell no. What have you got in the way back that keeps shifting?”

“A piece of trash we’re dropping at the nearest police station as soon as possible.” Treville pushed the gas a little harder. 

“I hear that,” Athos murmured, resting heavily against the seat and letting himself doze.

 

Constance wasn’t expecting any visitors. She definitely wasn’t expecting Treville to show up at nine-something on a Sunday evening, and she stopped completely in her tracks when the boys - _her_ boys – began filing into her kitchen. She pressed a hand over her mouth, frozen in place by her table, until each and every one of them was standing on the linoleum. 

d’Artagnan shifted from foot to foot. “I know we smell, but – “

She launched herself at him with a cry that sounded suspiciously like a sob. He caught her easily, burying his face in her hair and holding her tight enough to hurt. She pressed kisses to his face before worming her way out of his embrace to find the next in line. Porthos, Athos, and Aramis were treated to the same hug – though she hesitated with Aramis, as there didn’t seem to be a place on him that wasn’t some shade of black, blue, green, or yellow – and she finally collapsed into one of her kitchen chairs. 

“Food, if you want it. And baths. There’s plenty of hot water.” She knew she was babbling. From the looks on their faces so did they but she couldn’t help it. “Or if you just want to sleep. Anything, boys. Anything.”

“A shower, please,” Aramis said, shifting from foot to foot. “I smell like captivity.” And fear and death and a dozen other things he didn’t want to give name to.

He allowed Constance to lead him through the house to the stairs. Athos leaned tiredly against the counter, wondering if he could get away with finding someplace to fall down and sleep for a week. 

“We have to find a new apartment,” Porthos said, falling heavily into one of the kitchen chairs. 

“Yes, you do,” Athos agreed. 

“They trashed your apartment?” d’Artagnan asked, fishing a bottle of water from the depths of the fridge and drinking half of it in one go. 

“Not exactly,” he hedged, sharing a significant glance with Athos. “But…I can’t make him go back there. They came into that place – into our home – and forcibly took Aramis from it. After what happened in the training accident, and this…I can’t make him go back. I’m not even going to _ask_ him to.”

“Getting him to sleep is going to be another problem,” Athos said quietly. 

Porthos dropped his forehead to the table. “Fuck.”

“Have a little faith, gentlemen,” Treville said from where he leaned against the wall. “A little goes a long ways.” He dipped his head to Constance when she wandered back into the kitchen. “I will see you sometime tomorrow. I don’t expect to see you in the office for at least a week.”

“Four days,” Athos said.

“Five, and that’s pushing it.” He looked at each face. “Call me if you need me.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He hesitated to leave; Constance figured one more body wasn’t really going to hurt her already interesting reputation. 

“Jean-Armand, I have a spare room. At least for tonight? Keep everybody under one roof?”

Treville waited a beat, and then nodded. The relief on at least three faces was immediate. If he hadn’t already made up his mind to stay that would have sealed the deal.

 

They made a nest of blankets on the floor. Even d’Artagnan flopped his pillow on the floor with them, needing the skin to skin reassurance they were all there, still alive, and not waiting for the unthinkable to happen while they were separated by a wall. 

The door was left halfway open in deference to Aramis _and_ Athos, who had had enough of small spaces to last him a lifetime. d’Artagnan’s own closet door was shut, and he allowed himself to be manhandled into the middle of the blnakets, Athos a warm weight along his back. Aramis was in front of him, easily seen in the moonlight through the window in the darkness. He was mostly on his belly, pinned in place by Porthos’s leg across his own and a careful hand across his back. 

“Listen to my breathing, ‘Mis,” Porthos murmured. “Listen to it. I’m right here. d’Art’s behind you and Athos is on the outside, where he always is.”

“Aramis,” Athos said, half-leaning on d’Artagnan in order to see over him. _”I promised you we would go together, didn’t I? And we did. We are here, at Constance’s. We are safe. Anything that attempts to get us must get through the captain, first, and he is still an old war fox. You know he’ll have our backs.”_

He relaxed briefly. There was a hairsbreadth of quiet before he asked in French, _”Will you…hum that waltz again?”_

_”Of course. Close your eyes so you can listen better.”_ Athos nudged d’Artagnan closer so he could get nearer by proxy, and began humming a piece from _Swan Lake_. He settled an arm around d’Artagnan’s waist, curling his fingers into Aramis’s borrowed t-shirt. Porthos heaved a sigh, and for the first time in what felt like days, the four of them reached an even keel. One by one they dropped off into sleep, Athos holding out as long as possible.

 

He had to check. Just to be sure Morneau hadn’t won and he wouldn’t be digging four graves the next morning. Or, well, later in the morning, since it was ridiculously early.

Constance’s house was quiet. He ignored the fact that it was like they weren’t even there, and crept up the stairs. He’d fallen asleep on the couch some hours earlier and they’d left him there. Now, before he could find proper rest, he needed to see for himself they were alright.

The door was more than ajar. Treville crept all the way to the entrance to the room and looked. 

They were sprawled in a tangle of blankets, arms, and legs on the floor. Porthos and Athos kept them together like a pair of bookends, and there in the middle, curled like cats, were d’Artagnan and Aramis. They were as intertwined in sleep as they seemed to be in their waking hours, and he lingered as long as he dared to drink in the sight of them, safe and sound.

Aramis shifted with a noise of distress. The reaction was immediate: d’Artagnan crowded closer, Porthos hugged the slighter man more tightly to his chest, and Athos used the arm flung out over d’Artagnan’s head to wind his fingers gently in Aramis’s hair. He settled with a sigh, and the four of them relaxed once more, sliding deeper into sleep.

Treville smiled at the sight of the boys. His boys. And God help any other moron who thought to use his family against him. 

With that, he retreated down the hallway to get the first real rest he’d had since they realized Team One had been taken and he’d vowed silently to get them back.


	8. Here, There Be Demons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The kitchen was empty. Same with the living room. There was nobody in the bathroom, and the door to the bedroom was slightly ajar. He went slowly, easing it open further and stepping hesitantly around it. What he discovered terrified him and made his heart break in equal measure._
> 
> _Aramis sat with his back against the wall of the bedroom closet, K-BAR knife in one hand and Glock in the other, clearly waiting for something._
> 
>    
> Or: Four times Aramis was found by someone more in the past than the present, and one time he was solidly in the here and now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. *ducks* So. I know you were all probably expecting the aftermath of The Tactician's Playbook. Be assured that I am working on that. I moved out of my parents' house last weekend, started a new job, and only yesterday got internet. I will have that chapter up as soon as I can. 
> 
> In the meantime, some of you lovely gems (Mylos and Elia, I'm looking at you two) asked for a bit more with this particular image:
> 
>  
> 
> _Aramis sat with his back agaisnt the wall of the bedroom closet, K-BAR knife in one hand and Glock in the other, clearly waiting for something else._
> 
>  
> 
> Hopefully this hits the spot. It also hopefully shows that Aramis is working through his PTSD. (I like to imagine he has his good days and bad days like everybody else, and that his bad days, over time, are no longer truly fucking awful.)
> 
> Hasn't been beta'd. Any mistakes are mine, I don't own shit, and let me know if I've screwed something up horrendously. I can't tell you all enough how much I appreciate you, and the lovely comments. Seriously can't thank you all enough.

**Porthos**  
He’d learned, over the years, to trust his instincts. That low simmer of something unidentifiable in his belly meant all wasn’t what it should be no matter the situation, and the ability to heed it had only increased ten-fold upon joining Treville’s Musketeers. 

It was the same feeling that had him creeping through the apartment he’d began to jokingly refer to as his too – he’d been basically living with Aramis since he’d been released from the hospital after the SAVOY incident, and had only recently felt comfortable enough to leave him there by himself while he went to the office – in search of his impromptu roommate. 

The kitchen was empty. Same with the living room. There was nobody in the bathroom, and the door to the bedroom was slightly ajar. He went slowly, easing it open further and stepping hesitantly around it. What he discovered terrified him and made his heart break in equal measure. 

Aramis sat with his back against the wall of the bedroom closet, K-BAR knife in one hand and Glock in the other, clearly waiting for something. 

“Hey, ‘Mis,” Porthos said quietly, hands held palm out in a gesture of peace. 

He said nothing, and glanced fleetingly between Porthos and the bedroom door. The muzzle of the gun was pointed somewhere between the two. 

“There’s no attack out there, Aramis,” Porthos said. “Just you and me here.”

Out of his depth and nearly out of his mind, Porthos had no idea what to do for Aramis. He had no idea what to do in general. There wasn’t a manual for this shit, and he didn’t dare risk trying to call Athos in case Aramis took it badly. 

The absolute last thing they needed was for the gun to go off. 

“It’s a little dangerous out here, isn’t it?” He shuffled closer to Aramis and the closet, more than a little unnerved by the silence. “It’s safer in there with you, right?”

Aramis used his shoulder to try and scratch the neat row of stitches along his hairline and scooted slightly to the side. It was as clear an invitation as Porthos was going to get out of him, and he took advantage of it. Moving slowly, he eased himself to the floor and crawled on all fours into the closet next to Aramis. 

He settled, pressed shoulder to shoulder with the other man, and only half expected the K-BAR to be presented to him. 

“Fast and deadly,” Aramis whispered, still eyeing the door like he expected another attack to come barreling through it. “Bastards.”

Later – much later – after they were out of the closet with the weapons locked away in a safe Porthos had all but demanded Athos _get his ass over here **now** with it_ to which Aramis didn’t know the combination, the tension in Porthos’s shoulders eased slightly as Aramis walked them through his reason. 

There weren’t hallucinations. There was only this…shiver, under his skin he couldn’t get rid of. The feeling that he wasn’t safe and the only way he would be would be to be somewhere they couldn’t get him and armed to the teeth. 

_”You’re safe here, Aramis,”_ Athos said softly in French. _”You are safe here, and this is home. They cannot get you here. They cannot, and if they think they can, Porthos and I will make sure they do not. You have nothing to fear here.”_

It was, in that moment with Aramis curled on the couch between the two of them, enough.

 

 **Athos**  
Somewhere along the line – and somehow, without Athos realizing it – he’d gained two brothers-in-arms for the brother-in-blood he’d lost. Not only was he grateful for it, he was happy with it, too.

Which was the only reason he sat on Aramis’s couch on a Friday night. Porthos had been drafted to go to a conference in Vancouver, and for as much as he’d tried to get out of it after everything that had happened with Aramis, Treville wouldn’t – couldn’t – let him back out. So they’d dropped Porthos at the airport, said a few stoic goodbyes, and Athos had promised the big man he’d look after Aramis. 

Looking after Aramis included watching him pace back and forth between the doorway to the bedroom and the front door, checking the locks each time. Only he hadn’t done it for a while, and Athos realized with a pang of shame he’d lost track of the other man. Which, considering Aramis had more bad days than good ones presently, could potentially be a fairly large problem. 

Athos rocked to his feet with a sigh more weary than exasperated. None of them slept well. Aramis himself didn’t seem to sleep at all unless one of them was with him, and – 

Every train of thought cut off abruptly when he entered the bedroom and came face to face with the business end of Aramis’s spare Glock. The K-BAR knife in his other hand didn’t remotely register, and for one brief moment Athos had a feeling he never wanted to have in Aramis’s presence with him as the cause of it – he feared for his life, wretched and whiskey-soaked as it had been.

“Aramis,” Athos said slowly, immensely relieved when Aramis lowered the weapon and retreated a few steps toward the closet. 

“Can’t – can’t…” Aramis struggled to find the right words and watching him do so was almost physically painful. “Attack.”

Athos shoved his hands in his pockets, mostly so he wouldn’t be aware of his own trembling fingers. “Nope. No attack here.” His head tipped to the side, considering. “Unless you think I’m an attack?”

“No,” he barked. “You’re brother. You’re not – you’d never.” He shuffled backward, toward the edge of the closet. 

Once he got in there, Athos knew he’d have a hell of a time getting Aramis out again. 

“Aramis,” he said quietly. “I don’t like small spaces.”

The younger man glanced behind him at the darkened maw of the closet. 

“And you can’t protect me in there, either,” Athos continued, hoping to play on Aramis’s possessive streak the man would swear he didn’t have. “I don’t have a weapon.” 

Indecision was plain on Aramis’s face. He could retreat to what he considered the most easily defendable place in the apartment and leave Athos on his own, or he could stay, and sit somewhere horribly out in the open and protect him. Athos might have been without a weapon but that didn’t mean he was defenseless, and anyone who thought so was a moron of the highest order. 

Still...Aramis had his gun. Athos didn’t. 

Athos watched him carefully, and could practically see the cogs turning in Aramis’s soldier’s mind. It was why, when Aramis tucked the Glock in the back of his pants and wrapped his hand around Athos’s wrist, Athos let himself be tugged toward the corner on the other side of the bed. It provided enough cover to satisfy Aramis, was still wide open enough for Athos to breathe easily, and they had a clear view of the door. 

He also wasn’t surprised when Aramis handed him the K-BAR knife. 

“How do you think they’re going to come?” Athos asked in the near-silence that followed, once he was sure Aramis had settled into a headspace that was more present than past. 

“They come quick and quiet, out of the trees,” Aramis murmured, barely loud enough for Athos to hear without straining. “They wait for the cover of darkness, when we’re getting ready to sleep for the night. So we can’t fight back.”

Well, that explained most of Aramis’s recent bouts of insomnia. 

Aramis rested his forearms on his drawn up knees, Glock hanging loosely from his right hand. He shifted minutely, closer to Athos who allowed the press of Aramis’s warm side against his own. 

“I’m glad you and Porthos weren’t there.”

Athos forced himself not to tense at the softly-spoken words. He knew if he waited long enough Aramis would most likely explain them. 

“I couldn’t have lost you two. And I would hate for you to have to live with this.”

It was moments like this when Athos was forcibly reminded Aramis was a lone survivor, someone just as much cursed as blessed to still be living. 

“Well,” Athos said, twisting the knife in his hands to see Aramis’s reflection on the blade. “I, for one, am glad you’re here.”

He let his head drop to Athos’s shoulder with a sigh. He didn’t have to say the words but Athos could hear them loud and clear. _I’m glad you’re here with me, too, Athos._

 

 **d’Artagnan**  
The three of them had enough quirks as it was without regarding the muddled, calm waters that was their collective pasts. d’Artagnan knew of Athos’s demons, the shadow of his incarcerated wife that sometimes still lingered in his eyes on Monday mornings after a weekend of drowning in memories, sorrow, and whiskey. He knew Porthos’s own upbringing was far from a fairytale, and the children’s books on the shelf in his living room were his prized possessions from one of the only people in his life to actively be interested and make a difference. He said her name with reverence when he talked about her, and smiled fondly when he told the three of them about the better times. 

Aramis was so chipper and outgoing, easy to smile and quick to laugh, that d’Artagnan didn’t think the man _had_ any demons, so to speak. What he’d come to realize the hard way was that Aramis delighted in proving people wrong, even when he couldn’t help himself.

He wouldn’t have even gone in the small room. The only reason he opened the door, startled to find the light already on, was Constance asked him to grab some more reams of paper for the printer. He was expecting dusty shelves, boxes of office supplies, and maybe the odd random object stowed for safekeeping. He sure as shit wasn’t expecting Aramis wedged in the furthest corner, Glock in one hand and K-BAR knife in the other staring at him with a calculating gaze that bordered on feral. 

d’Artagnan almost dropped the ream of paper. “Aramis?”

The man in question swallowed thickly, but otherwise said nothing.

Feeling as though he’d stepped into something _way_ over his head, he set the paper on a nearby shelf and retreated slowly from the little room. There was no guarantee that the Glock was unloaded or the safety on, and he knew, without a doubt, Aramis hit 99.9% of what he aimed at. d’Artagnan didn’t want to find out if that was still true with him apparently half – or more – out of his head.

Calm as he could manage, he wandered back down the hallway into the space Constance had outside of Treville’s office. He ignored her incredulously look, and bee-lined instead for the conference room Athos and Porthos sat catching up on paperwork. Reading through old case files, probably, or working on new material Treville might assign them or another team.

“Hey, guys,” d’Artagnan said, leaning in the doorway. They turned toward him, and he suddenly found himself at a loss for words. How did one put this, anyway? _Our fourth teammate is currently having a mental breakdown in a closet, could you come help me get him out?_

“Yes?” Athos looked at him expectantly. 

“Is – is Aramis having a bad day?” he hedged.

Porthos’s shoulders stiffened. “Where is he?”

“The closet,” d’Artagnan said. “The supply one, not the mop one.”

“Is he armed?” Athos said, abandoning what he was working on to follow d’Artagnan back through the office and into the hallway, Porthos on his heels. 

“Yeah.”

“K-BAR and Glock?” Porthos asked.

There was a sinking feeling in d’Artagnan’s stomach that this wasn’t a one off occurrence. “Yeah – how did you know?”

“Experience,” Athos said as he slowly opened the closet door. He drew several deep breaths before easing into the space, thanking God it wasn’t the broom closet or he’d be in deep shit.

“Hey, ‘Mis,” Porthos said as the three of them crept inside. 

“Hi,” Aramis said tersely. 

d’Artagnan hovered by the almost-closed door. He watched as Porthos and Athos, speaking in low tones, convinced Aramis to at least put the safety on the Glock. It took them half an hour, most of it just the three of them sitting, Aramis bracketed between them, until they could get him on his feet and out of the closet. d’Artagnan grabbed Constance’s paper on his way out, watching as Athos’s hand slid up Aramis’s back to tangle briefly in his hair. 

“He alright?” d’Artagnan asked Porthos as he all but dropped the ream on Constance’s desk, much to her annoyance. 

“He will be,” Porthos said. “Just takes time, that’s all.”

He didn’t ask anymore questions as he knew that was all the answer he would get out of Porthos. Everyone had their demons, Aramis’s swallowed him whole when they escaped their carefully constructed cage. 

 

 **Constance**  
She sat on her couch with a movie on in the background, dozing comfortably. The week had been hellish, and all she’d wanted to do since she got to the office – empty, as Team One was out on assignment someplace classified enough for only those on a need to know basis to know (which she wasn’t) – was go back home and veg out, and then hope the weekend was restorative. 

The ruckus from her kitchen was loud enough to not only wake the dead but startle her off her cushion and wide awake.

She twisted quickly to her feet and pulled her sweater more securely around her as she headed for the back of the house. 

“Don’t let him get that knife – I’m not patching two of you assholes up!”

“d’Artagnan, hold that arm or he’ll break your nose.”

The voices she recognized as Porthos and Athos. If they were speaking to d’Artagnan then that meant the one struggling for all he was worth on her clean kitchen table was Aramis. He was also bleeding on her table, and her floor was in a state she hadn’t seen since that time d’Artagnan had come home covered head to foot in mud after playing football with the boys. 

“What the hell are you doing?” she yelled from the doorway.

Four heads turned in her direction, and Aramis paused briefly in his struggles. It was not unnoticed.

“Say something, Constance,” Athos said, a darkening bruise on his jaw and the beginnings of what would be a spectacular black eye marring his face. “Anything. He heard you.”

“Of course he heard me,” she snapped, stepping further onto the linoleum and well aware that while Aramis wasn’t tracking much else he was riveted to her. “I think my neighbors heard me, too. And you still haven’t answered my question.” She walked toward the end of the table where Aramis’s head rested. 

“Bust went bad,” Porthos said quietly, sitting on Aramis’s thighs and holding one wrist against the wood. He’d already sent up a prayer for the stability of Constance’s kitchen table, much gladder than he’d been when they’d moved it in that it was solid oak. “We were made.” He risked a glance at Athos. “We should have left two days ago.”

“We didn’t know they had made us then,” Athos said, using a pair of kitchen scissors to cut away Aramis’s shirt. Constance turned her head away from the knife cuts, swallowing thickly. “As far as we knew we weren’t compromised.”

Aramis bucked, straining at their hold, though he never took his eyes from Constance’s face. 

“We should have left when Aramis got sicker.” Porthos adjusted his weight on Aramis’s legs. 

“Sick?” she said, reaching out and playing her hand on his forehead. “God, he’s burning up.”

“He’s been throwing up, too,” d’Artagnan added helpfully. 

“He’s not in a good place – mentally – when he’s as sick as he is,” Athos said. “This needs to be stitched.”

“His kits over on the floor,” Porthos said, using his free hand to pin Aramis’s other arm to the table so d’Artagnan could go get it. “Shh, ‘Mis.”

Athos looked at Constance. “We can’t keep him out of the past and fix him up at the same time. There weren’t any women at that hellhole, so he knows he can’t be there when you talk to him.” He rifled quickly through Aramis’s duffle bag-sized med kit for what he needed. “Hum, if you can. He likes classical music. Or songs from musicals.”

d’Artagnan brought her a chair; she sank into gratefully, still uncertain as to what they were expecting from her – she wasn’t a miracle worker – though she couldn’t help but be proud of the fact they had come to her, of all people. 

She ran her fingers through Aramis’s sweaty hair and hummed some of the music from _Phantom of the Opera_. It was probably still playing on her TV in the living room. Aramis relaxed, the tension leaking out of his frame. Porthos didn’t move from where he sat, nor did he release his grip on Aramis’s wrists. d’Artagnan became Athos’s assistant, and Constance did her best not to watch as they literally sewed him up.

“Shouldn’t he be in a hospital?” she asked when she drew breath between finishing _Music of the Night_ and starting _All I Ask of You_. 

“Can’t risk it,” Athos said, snipping the thread at the end of stitching the first of the cuts on Aramis’s side. “They know they knifed him. If they still want us, they’ll be watching the hospitals. Best to lay low.”

“Thank you, by the way,” d’Artagnan said, reverence in his eyes as he watched her soothe a feverish, unaware Aramis who was borderline half asleep.

“You’re family,” she said softly. She used her other hand to unclench his fist and wrap her warm fingers around his cooler ones. “But you’re going to make this kitchen spotless and you owe me a very large, very expensive dinner. With good wine.”

“Done,” Athos said without looking up from his task. “Any preferences?”

“Something red, and wonderfully vintage.” Constance hunched over, relieved when she looked in his eyes and found the Aramis she knew staring groggily back at her. “Hello there, handsome. You’re quite sick, aren’t you?” As if the sweat coating his chest and beading his forehead wasn’t sign enough of that.

Porthos eased off his legs and let go of his wrists, trusting Constance’s judgment. 

“d’Artagnan, will you get some warm water please?” Athos asked. He stripped his gloves off and looked up. “You back with us, Aramis?”

He nodded tiredly. 

They sat him upright on the end of the table, Porthos holding him steady while Athos cleaned the blood from around the stitches and did his best to clean him up in general. 

“Where did he go, Athos?” Constance asked after Porthos had picked up like he weighed no more than a child and made toward one of her guest rooms upstairs, d’Artagnan following to get the spare blankets from the hall closet. 

“Remember that training accident?” He looked at the carnage that was Constance’s once-previously immaculate kitchen. 

“SAVOY?” The papers had come across her desk. So had Aramis’s psych evaluation, medical evaluation, and return to duty forms months after he’d been found among the snow-covered bodies of his brothers-in-arms by none other than Porthos and Athos. 

Athos looked at her silently; she drew her sweater around her again, more for a sense of security than because she was cold. 

“We all have good days and bad days, Constance,” he said quietly in the silence between them. “Some of us carry uglier demons than others.”

She knew the burden Athos carried. She’d been his call for a ride many times before in the early days of his work with the Musketeers. She’d seen him at his most vulnerable and now she had knowledge of what Aramis would carry until time faded it into nothing more than a painful memory that only ached when pressed on. 

Constance didn’t feel proud of this knowledge, only a deep, profound sadness for those who carried it with him.

 

 **And One Time It Didn’t Happen**  
Aramis had a possessive streak a mile wide he’d swear up and down didn’t exist. But it did, and it occasionally reared its ugly head. 

Especially if one of his brothers were taken.

It was one of Athos’s past cases back to haunt him, and the trail of breadcrumbs left by man too stupid to realize he was leaving obvious clues led straight to the woods. Porthos and d’Artagnan paused at the edge of the ditch, the pair of them glancing at Aramis as though waiting for something. 

Aramis walked by them and into the snow-covered trees, clearly on a mission. They had little choice but to follow, and though they sometimes lost the trail they found it just as quickly again. 

The footprints and drag marks – which suggested Athos wasn’t functioning well under his own power – led to a small cabin. Again, d’Artagnan expected Aramis to take a moment and gather himself, but all the man did was make sure his weapon was ready, and ask who would like to cover the rear entrance. 

It was over almost too quickly. 

The idiot was subdued, and d’Artagnan stood in the middle of a comically small one room cabin while Aramis inspected the huddled lump in the corner that was a semi-conscious Athos. 

“You’re here,” Athos muttered, wincing when Aramis probed the growing bruise on the side of his head. 

“Where else would I be?” Aramis said gently, as though Athos was an idiot and needed small words to understand. 

“But woods – snow…” He looked over Aramis’s shoulder beseechingly at Porthos, silently pleading for help. All Porthos did was shrug. 

“My priority is the living, Athos.” Aramis looped his arms under Athos’s and hauled him upright, waiting until his legs would take his weight to step back only as far as an arm-length. “Of which you are.”

Athos stared at him blankly, and wondered, for the first time, if this was a sign that, eventually, all wounds healed. As he was led toward the door, surrounded by Porthos, d’Artagnan, and Aramis, he allowed himself that little bit of hope that, maybe, it could be true.


	9. (Dis)Passion Fruit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Something, or someone, propped him further upright from behind, and he sucked in what little bit more oxygen he could in his new position. From the breadth of the chest behind him it had to be Porthos, and the tiny part of Athos’s brain not currently failing miserably at panicking that he **couldn’t fucking breathe** was secretly glad Porthos was there. _
> 
> _Though, at the same time, he couldn’t help but be inordinately pissed they were going to watch him die._
> 
>  
> 
> Or: While Athos isn't allergic to any medications, they find out the hard way he's allergic to something edible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allergic!Athos somehow became a headcanon because, clearly, having him be claustrophobic wasn't not enough. 
> 
> A note (or four) on the dress uniforms: after looking at various pictures of different uniforms from different places and peoples, I just decided that I'm rolling with a sort of updated version of what they normally wear in the show. Minus the weaponry, of course. But if you've seen a picture of a the RCMP, and perhaps the Horse Guards in London, then this, in some reality, might actually happen. 
> 
> I adore you all. Seriously. And I have so many fics that I want to write for this verse but I need more than 24 hours in a day in order to start getting them all...started. They're coming, I swear. 
> 
> Anyway. Anything you recognize I probably don't own. Also, if I've royally screwed something up and something does not make sense, please let me know. 
> 
> Long note is long, I'm tired, and I hope this sounds as good written out as it did in my head because, I'm not gonna lie, I have my doubts about this one. Anyway...enjoy.

He hated this. The pomp and circumstance, the unofficial official order to play nicely with the Mounties for the night, and, of course, the dress uniform, were enough to make him want to pre-game like he had in college in the hopes that he’d get so off track on his way there he’d never make it. 

That would, however, be considered “Conduct Unbecoming a Musketeer” – as cited in the unofficial official handbook residing in his kitchen junk drawer – and Treville would probably not only write him up but put him on the security detail with all of Richelieu’s biggest supporters the next time the Louis, the Public Safety Commissioner, went anywhere requiring protection.

Hell, Athos really wouldn’t put it past Treville for insisting Louis needed when one he didn’t really, and then offering up Athos in a bid for better inter-agency diplomacy.

So, with that in mind, Athos dry-swallowed the scathing comments on his tongue and tried desperately not to think about his own childhood and adolescence. Parts of it were spent much in the same kind of company as what he was currently trying to escape by blending in with the wall – an elite group of people with far too much disposable income and not nearly enough common sense.

He tugged on the high collar of his uniform coat, briefly debating whether he could get away with popping another button. If he couldn’t have easily picked out Richelieu’s men he would have felt ridiculous. There was already a certain amount reserved for the fact he was wearing a _dress uniform_ ; the thing was highly unpractical in today’s society. Breeches, knee high leather boots, leather coat over a linen shirt, and that damn spaulder on his right shoulder he never had on long enough to get used to. 

And to think men used to wear this and actually _fight_. 

“You should at least look like you’re attempting to enjoy yourself,” a voice whispered from his left. 

“Can’t you tell I’m thrilled?” Athos said quietly, the corners of his mouth twitching as Aramis shuffled along the wall to stand shoulder to shoulder with him. 

“You do look ecstatic,” Aramis said dryly. 

Aramis had the grace and charm to look as comfortable in the dark, slightly bluish leather as though he wore it every day. The bastard.

“Has the captain made his rounds yet?” It was Athos’s intention to more or less bolt as inconspicuously as possible for the nearest exit after Treville had confirmed his presence. The man was damn vindictive if he wanted to be, though that was probably the only way he kept at least half a step ahead of the hooligans he employed. 

“He’s working on it.” Aramis crossed his arms over his chest and Athos’s attention was drawn to the spot of bright blue under the wide belt he wore. 

“Don’t tell me you shredded your boatcloak,” Athos said, something warm curling beneath his sternum at the sight of Aramis’s wide smile and slight chuckle. Out of all their dress uniform pieces the boatcloak was the most useful because it was the most practical – it kept the wearer ridiculously warm and still allowed for nearly unrestricted arm movement. 

“No.” He chuckled again, letting it die down on its own. “It’s – it was Marsac’s. He left it in the woods.” He looked briefly at his feet before staring out at the crowd of evening gowns, tuxedos, and law enforcement uniform. “What was left of it, anyway.”

Athos was reminded with a sickening clarity the two year anniversary of SAVOY was coming up within a few weeks’ time. Treville wouldn’t – couldn’t – do anything in commemoration, and Athos knew that would be a rough night for Aramis. 

A three-grown-men-in-Athos’s-California-king-size-bed kind of night. 

He snagged a munchie off a passing waiter’s tray and shoved it unceremoniously into his mouth whole, mostly for a distraction from the silence – not uncomfortable or tense, but not exactly calm, either – and the Safety Commissioner’s Annual Gala in general. 

Athos swallowed heavily. God, he hated these damn things with a passion. 

“What was that thing?” Aramis asked, ready enough to steer the conversation back out of dark waters and into something much more manageable for the two of them.

“Don’t – “ He swallowed again, and coughed slightly to clear his throat. “Don’t know.”

The tickle in the back of his throat grew exponentially, and someone must have jacked up the heat when he wasn’t looking, too. Propriety be damned, he undid another button his jacket and tipped his head back against the wall. 

“Athos?”

Panic wrapped icily around his guts as each breathe became more labored than the previous. He took a step away from the wall, intent on finding a door or window the outside, as he was so hot he must have been turning red, and his legs nearly went out from under him. 

“Athos!”

Aramis’s face was inches from his own, and he had a fistful of Aramis’s coat with one hand while the other scrabbled uselessly against the floor, as though any leverage it might provide would be useful in his current situation. He wasn’t so much breathing anymore as he was wheezing, high-pitched and painful, and the only thing he could still see with any clarity – the rest of the world had gone fuzzy and out of focus – was Aramis’s face, brown eyes concerned yet clinical. 

He was speaking, but Athos would be damned if he could actually hear any of it over the rushing in his ears. 

Something, or someone, propped him further upright from behind, and he sucked in what little bit more oxygen he could in his new position. From the breadth of the chest behind him it had to be Porthos, and the tiny part of Athos’s brain not currently failing miserably at panicking that he _couldn’t fucking breathe_ was secretly glad Porthos was there. 

Though, at the same time, he couldn’t help but be inordinately pissed they were going to watch him die.

 

“Athos!” Aramis used his best soldier’s voice; Athos made an attempt to focus on him. His eyes started to roll back in his head, and, out of desperation to make him stay awake, Aramis slapped him. Not hard enough to leave a mark but enough to get his attention.

It drew a few stares and murmurs from the gathered audience. 

“He still with us?” Porthos asked, propping Athos more upright and holding him there by his upper arms instead of across his chest. 

“Barely.” The grip Athos had on Aramis’s front hadn’t faded, and Aramis brought Athos’s free hand up and pressed it palm-down against his own chest. “Here, Athos. Breathe. In and out. Come on, Athos.”

Athos tried. It was feeble, and more noise than air, but he tried. 

“Good. Good, Athos. Again.”

“Paramedics are two minutes out, boys,” Treville said, cell phone still pressed to one ear. 

His head dropped back onto Porthos’s shoulder, eyes half-closed. 

“Athos, please,” Aramis said.

The paramedics burst into the room; Athos’s fingers dropped away from Aramis’s jacket and Aramis could no longer hear the little high-pitched wheezes Athos made as Athos had stopped breathing completely.

 

Every bone, joint, and muscle in his body ached. His throat felt like sandpaper, and from the way his heart thudded in his chest he may or may not have just finished running a marathon. But why the fuck would he have run a marathon while hungover? 

He cracked his eyes open with supreme effort, expecting to see the underside of a table. Usually if he was this drunk he almost never wound up in his bed to sleep it off, though he couldn’t have imagined who would have called for pickup this time. 

Well, maybe he knew where the fuck he was and everything wasn’t so…so….

Ambulance?

A face he didn’t recognize leaned over him, and he could make out enough of a uniform to identify that yes, indeed, was in the clutches of the medical community. Did he have alcohol poisoning again? Is that why he was in an ambulance? Or maybe it was the fucking elephant on his chest and the sandpaper in his throat.

He didn’t remember _eating_ sandpaper, was the problem. Truthfully, he didn’t remember drinking. 

The paramedic looked at someone on the other side of him, and Athos felt it only natural – and because he was curios, and didn’t have anything else to do but wonder where the fuck he was and how the fuck he got there – he look, too. 

Aramis. He’d gone drinking with _Aramis_? Weird, as his drinking buddy of choice was usually Porthos, as Porthos was the one out of the three of them to be able to cart Athos’s drunk ass home.

Aramis smiled at him, that little half-smile that made Athos want to shave his beard off because it infuriated him. It was the reassuring smile, the one Aramis tried when everything was making him twitchy and he didn’t want anyone to know. 

He felt pressure on his fingers and knew Aramis was squeezing his fingers. Seconds later Aramis’s other hand moved, and Athos caught a glimpse of a blue squeeze bottle. Aramis squeezed it rhythmically, not too fast and not too slow. 

Athos let his attention and his eyes wander, only to discover the little blue plastic squeeze bottle led to a tube. That very same tube then led into…him. 

Fuck. Just how drunk _was_ he?

Well, Aramis was there. And Aramis wouldn’t let anything happen to him. 

Athos gave in to the urge to sleep – and not have to see anything he might otherwise not want to see – and let the darkness swallow him again.

 

He woke up sometime later with an itch in his nose. He swiped at it, whining when someone grabbed his hand. 

“No, Athos. Leave the oxygen alone, you need it.”

It took several seconds of tired but furious blinking to get the world to come into focus, and he found Aramis sitting in one of those hard plastic chairs all hospitals seemed to come with by his bedside. Porthos was sprawled inelegantly into another one, head tipped back against the wall and sound asleep. They still wore their dress uniforms, though Aramis was down to his breeches and shirtsleeves, his jacket serving as a blanket for Porthos. 

Athos licked his lips and croaked out, “What hit me?”

Aramis snorted. “A pomegranate.”

“Th’ f’ck?”

Rubbing his eyes, Aramis let out a relieved chuckle. “A pomegranate. Turns out you’re allergic to the little bastards.”

A _pomegranate_? He didn’t even know what that was. 

“It was the main ingredient of that thing you ate,” Aramis continued. “Then your throat closed up.” He said it with a brittle smile. 

“’Mis,” Athos said, reaching for the other man. 

“You stopped breathing, Athos,” he whispered. “You stopped fucking breathing. And a pomegranate’s a fruit,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

Laid up by a goddamn fruit of all things. He couldn’t say he’d ever expected that.

“’Mis.” He held out his hand, arm shaking from the effort until Aramis slid his palm against Athos’s and held fast. 

Aramis dropped his forehead to their joined hands with a murmur; Athos looked over and briefly caught Porthos’s eye before closing his own to the sound of Aramis reciting the Lord’s Prayer in French.

 

As a result of Athos’s first and only – at the time – run-in with a pomegranate, Aramis had taken to carrying an epipen at all dinners and galas they were required to go to. It came in handy later on when d’Artagnan, well-meaning as always, brought Athos a drink who’s main ingredient was pomegranate juice. There was still a trip to the hospital, of course, but the look on Athos’s face when Aramis told him he “needed to get his pants off STAT” for the epipen was nothing short of priceless and sort of made up for it.


	10. Creature of Habit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Athos was beyond irritated. It was near midnight by then, and the idea he’d had to get at least six uninterrupted hours of sleep had gone out the window the moment he’d gotten a phone call from a sergeant a Quebec City Police precinct that they were holding one of his men. He expected Porthos. Porthos, despite the tight reign he kept on it, sometimes had a temper. The big man had been in his fair share of bar brawls and fistfights, though working with Athos and Aramis had seemed to smooth out some of his rougher edges._
> 
> _But no, it wasn’t Porthos._
> 
> _There, sitting in the interrogation room with his cuffed hands resting on the table and cultivating a spectacular set of facial bruises, was Aramis._
> 
>    
> Or: One of Aramis's lesser-known bad habits comes to light and what should be a fairly easy sentence to serve backfires into something more. Coincidentally, it's also the first - and last - time he tries to lie to Athos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This got away from me. I had intended to have something up about a week ago for you all, but then this plot bunny demanded to be written, and Megs had asked for something with the first time Aramis had tried to lie to Athos based on this line from Chapter 4, "The Rundown"
> 
>  
> 
> _And he knew it wasn’t worth it to attempt to lie to Athos. Aramis had only tried it once and it hadn’t turned out in his favor._
> 
>  
> 
> Like I said, this whole thing got away from me, and 8800+ words later there's this. A couple other things to note: I have no idea if pool hustling is illegal in Canada (I don't know if it's illegal in the US, either) but for the sake of the fic we're going to assume it is. Also, I'm incredibly worried everybody is _wildly_ OOC. Especially Aramis. Though, to his credit, when he fucks up he goes all out. (Case in point, episode 9.)
> 
> I swear this is the last part of this note. I swear. Just in case anybody was wondering, this fic is set VERY early on in their days as a trio. Probably very shortly after Chapter 2 "Three Is Company". Also, if anybody's curious, the ages that I've gone with for the three of them are 27 (Athos), 26 (Porthos), and 24 (Aramis). That would make everything set with d'Artagnan (and therefore five years post-Savoy) have them at 32, 31, and 29 respectively. Which could maybe be how old they are in the series itself, but I don't know that for certain. 
> 
> Anyway. Hasn't been beta'd. Any mistakes are mine, I don't own anything (except the SITRU) and the government takes all my money for student loans. Anything I've totally screwed up let me know, and ya'll are seriously the best readers a girl could ask for. I adore you all and can't tell you that enough.

Like everything else in life there were both perks and pitfalls to being the boss. The perk was that Athos had a bit of sway with some of the cases they took, though there were, of course, ones they were assigned because that was just how things worked out. With never-ending paperwork, the propensity for property damage that seemed to come with working with Aramis and Porthos, and being in charge of Team One, sometimes the pitfalls seemed to outweigh the perks. 

Especially when it came to riding herd over someone who wasn’t very far removed from his university days, despite what he’d seen of the world and its hardships. 

Aramis was a great Musketeer. He was an uncanny sniper, a good friend, loved to live and lived to love. Which was all well and good when he needed to focus on the task at hand or was charged with keeping Athos and Porthos safe from some hidden place in the rafters of a warehouse. What he wasn’t so good at, sometimes, was keeping his own nose out of trouble. 

Athos was beyond irritated. It was near midnight by then, and the idea he’d had to get at least six uninterrupted hours of sleep had gone out the window the moment he’d gotten a phone call from a sergeant a Quebec City Police precinct that they were holding one of his men. He expected Porthos. Porthos, despite the tight reign he kept on it, sometimes had a temper. The big man had been in his fair share of bar brawls and fistfights, though working with Athos and Aramis had seemed to smooth out some of his rougher edges. 

But no, it wasn’t Porthos. 

There, sitting in the interrogation room with his cuffed hands resting on the table and cultivating a spectacular set of facial bruises, was Aramis. 

“He asked to call his lawyer,” the sergeant, a genial man by the name of DuBois said. “We didn’t think he’d be callin’ you, Athos.”

He and DuBois knew each other fairly well from Athos’s days as a prosecution lawyer, a fact that escaped neither of them at that moment. The running joke had been that DuBois would catch them and Athos would put them away, the pair of them a stronger inter-departmental tag-team than anyone would have ever thought. 

DuBois had been almost sad to see Athos give up his practice to become a member of law enforcement on his side of the badge, though he couldn’t say he didn’t appreciate those efforts, too. Treville’s Musketeers weren’t to be trifled with; Team One was especially ruthless when necessary.

“Good to see he has some brains left in his head,” Athos commented dryly. “What did you pick him up for?”

“Hustlin’ at the Red Jug.” DuBois handed over a manila file marked d’Herblay. “It’s not the first time, apparently. He got picked up for it in Montreal, Toronto, and a few times here in QC.”

“He never mentioned anything about it to us.” He looked through the folder, noticing Aramis’s first mug shot showed him to be only about seventeen or eighteen. He looked painfully young without his facial hair. While there was the occasional speeding ticket, Aramis’s police record seemed to be made entirely of pool hustling. 

This time, however, it was on incident too many. 

“Give me a few minutes, Terry. I’ve got a phone call to make.” Athos pulled his cell phone from his pocket. 

“You want me to tell him you’re here?” DuBois asked, gesturing to Aramis, who now had his head down, fingers buried in his hair and looking the absolute picture of misery personified. 

“Not yet,” he said. “We need this to sink in.”

 

Aramis decided, around one in the morning, he was up shit creek without a paddle. Also, when Athos got there, Athos was going to kill him, and then Aramis would probably – if he was still alive – be sitting in jail for the rest of the night. Which would put a damper on the fact he had to be to work at eight, and someone would need to tell Treville – 

Oh. _Fuck._

The door to the interrogation room banged open before his brain could go any further down that rabbit hole, and his head jerked up sharply to see Athos slam it shut hard enough to rattle the blinds. He eyed the older man warily, wincing when his own folder hit the table in front of him with a slap. 

“Athos – “

“Shut up,” Athos snapped. 

Aramis clamped his jaw shut and saw for the first time Athos the Prosecutor instead of Athos the Musketeer. The intensity was still there, and Aramis wondered if this brief, unholy terror sitting in his gut was how many of the criminals Athos had put away felt before he’d laid into them like sharks in bloody water. 

He swallowed around the lump in his throat and tried again. “Athos – “

Athos slammed both hands on the table and leaned far enough into Aramis’s personal space for him to wonder about further bodily harm as he growled, “Shut. Your. Mouth.”

Shrinking back in his seat, Aramis did just that, resolved not to speak until he was permitted. 

“Imagine my surprise when my friend Terry DuBois calls me up in the middle of the night to say he has one of my men in custody,” Athos said pleasantly, straightening up and beginning to nonchalantly pace on the other side of the table. “I’m thinking it’s maybe Porthos, because Porthos likes a good brawl. Or maybe it’s someone from one of the other teams because, last I knew, Team One was well enough behaved in their off hours. Imagine my utter fucking surprise when I get down here and it’s you, Aramis, sitting here in handcuffs. And for what?”

Aramis wasn’t sure if that was his cue to contribute to the conversation or not, and damn near bit his tongue. 

“What did you get arrested for, Aramis?” Athos demanded.

“Hustlin’ pool,” he said quietly. 

“And not the first time, is it?” He gestured to the folder between them. “How old were you the first time you got picked up?”

“Seventeen.” Aramis couldn’t meet Athos’s eyes, and looked at the folder instead. From the edge of his vision he watched Athos finally sit. “It’s a habit.”

Athos stiffened. “A _habit_?”

“Not like that,” he said hurriedly. “Not that – just…fuck.”

“Yeah.” Athos’s tone was dry as paper. “That about sums it up.” He looked over his shoulder at the one-way glass and made a _come here_ gesture with his hand. “You are, however, incredibly lucky. Stupid, but lucky.”

Aramis couldn’t contain his snort. “Lucky?”

“Lucky,” he reiterated, tone downright deadly. “That the judge who was going to slap you with thirty days in jail is the same judge who’s daughter you helped save from a heroin overdose a couple cases ago.” He smiled wryly. “He believes in rehabilitation, when possible, and figures that you won’t do anybody any good sitting in jail when you could be at the Garrison actually doing your goddamn job.”

He hadn’t thought about _that_ , and Athos knew it, too, from the way his eyes narrowed. 

The door to the room opened again; DuBois tossed Athos a square box and then retreated. 

“The judge and I spoke for a bit,” Athos continued, “and he was just about as happy as I was to be woken up by a phone call at this hour. Letting you go with no consequences isn’t an option – we’re not above the laws we have to enforce – and he came up with this rather fitting idea.” He nimbly opened the box.

Aramis’s eyes widened and what little color was left in his face drained. “No.”

“I don’t really think you have a choice here, Aramis,” he said coolly. “Or, if you would like a choice, it’s this or thirty days in with Quebec City’s common criminals.” He leaned forward. “Do you _really_ want to know what will happen to you if they find out you’re law enforcement?”

No. No he didn’t. A black eye and a bruised jaw would be the least of his problems then. 

“So, we’ll trade those thirty days for thirty days with this nifty thing.” Athos held up the tracking anklet more commonly found from his lawyer days when dealing with PINS cases. “You have a one mile radius from your apartment. You are allowed to be outside that radius only if you are with myself, Porthos, or Treville. Should you go outside that radius without one of us, your thirty days start over again.” If he couldn’t see the harsh rise and fall of Aramis’s chest he would have thought the younger man had stopped breathing he’d gone so still and pale. 

He had to swallow a few times before he could find his voice to ask, “Who – who gets notified if I step outside my radius?”

“I do.” Athos pinned him with a look anyone else would have dropped dead from. “And you do _not_ want to test me on that.” He waited until he was reasonably sure Aramis wasn’t going to fall over to add, “You remove it before the thirty days are up or dismantle it in any way your radius will shrink. I highly doubt you will like any form of house arrest.”

Aramis couldn’t imagine being trapped within his apartment when he wasn’t at work. The mere thought was enough to send his blood pressure through the roof.

Athos rose smoothly, the anklet dangling from one hand. “Now, which leg would you like it on?”

 

Porthos pulled out a chair across the conference table from a silent, sullen, and more than half-asleep Aramis and plopped himself gracelessly into it. “Where is it?”

Aramis didn’t look at him, choosing instead to focus harder on the out of order reports in front of him. “Where is what?”

“Don’t play dumb.” He reached out and used his long legs to prod at Aramis’s shin under the table. 

Heaving a sigh, Aramis rolled his chair back enough for him to haul his left foot up. He’d had to wear his classic Chuck Taylors to work, as the anklet wouldn’t fit in his boots, and he lifted his pant leg to show Porthos the black box with its cheery green light. 

“You’re lucky,” Porthos said as Aramis hid his literal ball and chain again, and dropped his foot to the floor. 

He snorted. “You and Athos keep saying that, and I’m just not seeing it yet.” He gestured to the conference table. “I have two weeks of desk duty and then a week of probation. The captain took my badge and shield.”

Porthos flinched. He couldn’t help it. It was the most unnerving thing Treville could have done to the three of them – to any Musketeer – and it explained why Aramis wasn’t feeling as lucky as people kept telling him he was. 

If Treville had taken his badge and shield, there was also the good chance he’d taken Aramis’s Glock, too, as procedure dictated with the temporary loss of his credentials. Which would proceed to drive the younger man completely up the wall. 

Still, Porthos wasn’t above rubbing a little salt in an open wound when necessary. “Took your gun, too, didn’t he?”

The glare Aramis gave him was worthy of Athos. “Restricted access to the range, too.”

“That’s what you get when you hustle Red Guards at pool on their home turf,” Athos said blithely, dropping another stack of files on the table. 

“That’s what happens when you get caught,” Aramis protested. He ran his fingers through his hair, papers momentarily forgotten. “I’m not obvious about it.”

“Your police record would beg to differ.” Athos kept his tone somewhat gentle, and sat next to Porthos. 

“Why’d you start?” Porthos’s simple question helped ease the rising tension in the room. 

Aramis shrugged. “University’s expensive. I didn’t want to live off Ramen for three years and scholarship can only get you so far.”

Well, _that_ explained the sheer number of times Aramis had been slapped on the wrist for it, and why it had started roughly about the time he’d first gone to university. 

“The others?” Athos pressed. 

“Not actually hustling,” he said, looking Athos in the eye for the first time since the older man had barged angrily into the interrogation room that morning. “But they lost, they got angry, somebody called the cops, and that’s one of those things that you can’t really prove you weren’t doing it but everybody thinks they can definitely tell you did.”

Eyebrows raised, Athos busied himself with some preliminary file sorting. 

“How’d they let you into the SRU?” Porthos was genuinely curious. “I didn’t think they wanted anybody with criminal records.”

Aramis smiled wryly. “If you consider _that_ a criminal record, then clearly you haven’t been paying attention at your own job for the past year and a half.”

The big man took the jibe for what it was, delivered in the same easy, teasing tone he was used to, and relaxed minutely. Aramis had been wound since he’d come in that morning, suffered a well-deserved dressing down from Treville, and been holed up on his own in the conference room since. Porthos was secretly happy to see this hadn’t knocked him down for long, even if it was going to be a lengthy thirty days for all of them. 

“On a scale of one to murder in the first degree, pool hustling is small potatoes,” he said with a smile. “That and I was so busy going through training and then being on rotation and call with Team Two that there wasn’t any time for me to go find bars with pool tables.” He shrugged again. “I like to play pool.”

There was something a little more loaded hidden in that statement, and Porthos couldn’t help himself by asking, “How’d you learn?”

He went quiet for a moment, fingers tangling briefly together in one of the few fidget-like tells he had. “My father taught me. We, uh, had this old pool table in our basement. He taught Louisa and Rosalie, too, but it was our thing. I’d do my homework, he’d come home from work, and for a couple hours before I had to go to bed we’d be in the basement.” Aramis scratched idly at the stubble on his neck – he hadn’t had the chance to trim his beard that morning – and added, “He was – we were starting easy trick shots when he – he died. I’m not sure what he’d say about my current…accessory,” he added dryly. 

“Thirty days, Aramis,” Athos reminded him. “Thirty days of keeping your nose absolutely clean.”

Aramis tipped an imaginary hair. “Not a problem, boss.”

 

He’d never particularly cared to mark the passing of time each day. He ignored Treville’s desk calendar whenever he was in the man’s office, and though he could appreciate that Constance kept them on all schedule – to the best of her ability, because even _she_ wasn’t a miracle worker – he never saw the appeal of counting down the days. 

Until now. 

Now he had a jumbo calendar taped to his fridge and he crossed off each day with Sharpie. The first of the next month was circled. Porthos had helpfully written _Aramis Gets Debugged!!_ on that day the last time he’d been over for a beer, and Aramis found he was looking forward to it. 

Living life with a tracking anklet? Not as much fun as it was cracked up to be. More of a nuisance, really, and he would be very glad to be rid of the damn thing.

 _Five more days,_ he thought. _Five more fucking days of this shit._

He couldn’t say he didn’t deserve it, and he definitely couldn’t say he would have taken the other alternative. He had no desire to know what they did to law enforcement in jail, and he hoped he never found out. 

Reaching down, he lifted his pant leg enough to see the happy green light on the side of the box on his anklet. 

Five days. That was all he had left. Five days.

His phone blared from the living room coffee table, and he jogged from the kitchen to get it. Marsac’s name was across the display, and he opened it with a slightly hesitant, “Hello?” 

Marsac calling at nine-something usually meant some form of shenanigans was either about to ensue or he was caught in the middle.

_”Aramis?”_

“Marsac.” He cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder to scratch at his jaw. “What’s up?”

_”I need your help.”_

The words were right but the tone was…off. 

“With what?” Aramis asked guardedly, the tracker an uncomfortable reminder on his leg. 

_”I’m about to lose my rent for the month,”_ he said. _”I’m at The Orleans and I’m in over my head.”_

The Orleans. The pub was dangerously close to the edge of his radius, it was late, and there was the small matter of his tracking anklet. 

_”Aramis, please,”_ Marsac said. _”If I don’t pay my landlord he’s going to evict me. Please. Just this once.”_

Just once. Just that night. He’d get in, win Marsac back his rent, and then go home. No one would have to know. 

Athos wouldn’t have to know.

“Alright.” Aramis headed for the mat in the kitchen with his shoes on it. “I’ll be right there. We’ll get you your rent and then I’m leaving, okay?”

_”Thank you, Aramis. I’ll make it up to you.”_

The line went dead, and Aramis knew if something went wrong Marsac would be paying through his nose for it for the foreseeable future. He bent to lace his sneakers and caught a glimpse at the calendar on the fridge. 

Five days. 

Aramis grabbed his keys and left without a backward glance. 

 

“Oi! That’s your reinforcements?”

Aramis ignored the jeer as he selected a cue from the rack on the wall and joined Marsac at the felt. “Nervous?”

“Fuck no,” the behemoth of a man said. “If you play like him then I’m going to have to take all your money, too.”

He shrugged. “We’ll see.” He watched the man’s friend rack. “Who has break?”

“You can. Not that’ll make much difference.”

Aramis shrugged out of his jacket and rolled up the sleeves on his shirt. He took the cue ball, placed it where he preferred it when breaking, and sank into his stance much like he sank into his sniper’s headspace. Looking up, he blithely asked, “If you’re so sure about this, you wanna go double or nothing?”

Marsac fidgeted briefly with his cue, well aware he was already in the hole as it was. 

The behemoth shared a glance with his friend and nodded. “Sure. Twice as much money. You’re on.”

He shifted in his stance, and drew the cue back, and pushed it forward on the exhale. All thoughts of Athos, the tracking anklet, and those last five days flew from his mind as the balls on the felt scattered accordingly. 

The first game went easily enough. Aramis let the others shoot at least a few times, though he and Marsac won. It was enough of a showing to make it look as though he could lose, and it prompted them to bet on another game. The second was theirs again, by a narrow margin, and Aramis breathed a sigh of relief when Marsac nodded subtly to show him he could pay his rent for the month. 

Aramis glanced at his watch – it was nearing midnight. He’d done his duty as a good friend, Marsac had his money, and _he_ needed to get out of there before lady luck decided to screw him over hard. 

“Lovely to play you, but I really must be going.” Aramis clapped Marsac on the shoulder, inclined his head at the other players, and went to beat a tactical, if hasty retreat. 

“So soon? Afraid you can’t make three in a row?”

He paused, shoulders going rigid. Turning, he said, “Excuse me?”

“Afraid you can’t win three in a row? I think it’s beginners luck, really.”

Someone, back when he’d first joined Team Two of the SRU had asked him the same thing on the range. He’d shut them up right quick by sinking an entire clip into the same bullet hole in the paper target, and they never mentioned the phrase _beginner’s luck_ again. Beginner’s luck didn’t keep people alive, honed talent and skills did. 

That part of Aramis, the part nearly all the Musketeers had, that responded to a challenge in any capacity reared its ugly head. 

Marsac, bottle halfway to his mouth, watched him carefully. 

“There is no such thing as beginner’s luck,” Aramis said, taking up his cue again. “Just you and me. I’ll even let you break.”

The behemoth grinned, all shark-like teeth, and Aramis returned it with one of his own. He was going to rather enjoy this, as he hadn’t played pool in such a way for nearly a month. 

His opponent sunk a ball off the break, and missed his next shot. Aramis circled the table like a predator its prey, and saw the combination of shots laid out before him like targets through his rifle scope. Meticulously, with the precision that made him the SITRU’s top sniper, he pocketed them all one by one. And, just because he could, he chose to corner pocket the eight ball instead of side pocket, slotting it neatly between three of the remaining numbers on the felt. 

Marsac finished his beer, though he kept a grip on the bottle. 

“You hustled us!”

Aramis bristled. “I did no such thing.”

“You’re a fuckin’ hustler!”

He put his cue back in the rack and turned to face the man he’d just beaten soundly. “There was no money exchanged in that game, therefore I couldn’t have hustled you. And we barely won those two games we did bet on. I’m not a hustler.”

He wasn’t – he as just damn good at what he did, even if it was slightly to the left of the law. 

“Give me back my money.” The behemoth advanced on him; Aramis sidestepped him easily. 

“Back off, alright? You don’t want to do this.” He and Marsac were both off-duty SITRU officers, trained in hand-to-hand combat. Aramis, having learned some of the finer points of bar fighting from Porthos, was particularly dangerous. Marsac was just plain scrappy. 

Marsac, Aramis noted with some bewilderment, was also nowhere to be found.

He turned back around and only quick reflexes saved him a punch across the jaw. He returned with one of his own; the man drew a switchblade from his pocket, and soon enough the entire bar descended into chaos, Aramis in the middle of it. 

Elbow deep in the fray, he nearly missed the first sound of sirens. The tracking anklet chafed against his leg, and with the only witness on his side of things long gone, Aramis did something he never thought he’d do – he grabbed his jacket, ducked under a flailing arm, and beat feet out of there. Something seared across his shoulder just under the blade, and he ignored it in favor of threading his way through the people and making his way nonchalantly up the street, jacket on and his hands buried in his pockets. 

What he was completely unaware of was the wallet containing his badge and shield lying on the floor by the wreckage of the pool table. 

 

He skirted the edge of his radius on his way back to his apartment, mindful not to step too close to it lest he set it off accidentally. Athos had made it clear who would get that call if he did, and he had no desire to deal with a sleep-deprived Athos. 

It was near one in the morning after he’d taken the long way back, and he staggered into his bathroom to the sensation there was something wet and warm dripping down his back. He was pale in the bright lights, and twisting his shoulders around damn near made him see stars. 

The back of his shirt was dark with blood. 

“Shit,” he muttered, struggling out of his shirt. Bare from the waist up, he twisted his neck to see the damage, and had to lock his knees to stay upright. There was a cut – probably from that damn switchblade, though he couldn’t say when it happened – starting over by his ribs and curling up and around his shoulder blade. 

It was bleeding pretty good, too, and he leaned heavily on the sink. There was no way to bandage it himself, and calling Porthos was out of the question. Porthos would ask questions, and Aramis couldn’t lie to him. 

Calling Athos would be the equivalent of signing his own suspension papers and ensuring another thirty days with his damn anklet. Possibly under glorified house arrest. 

He definitely wasn’t calling Marsac; the man had abandoned him in the ensuing bar fight, anyway, and Aramis highly doubted he’d even answer his phone. 

No, he was on his own for this one, and the very thought left a sour taste in his mouth. 

 

“Twice in a month, Terry,” Athos said as he walked into DuBois’s precinct the next morning on his way to the Garrison. “I’m beginning to think you missed me.”

“Thanks for coming in, Athos,” Terry said, gesturing to his office. “You might want to sit for this one.”

Eyebrows raised, Athos sat in the chair in front of Terry’s desk and waited for the other man to seat himself. The question he was posed was not one he expected.

“Can you account for all your men last night?”

“Just my team? They should have been at home.” Athos leaned forward. “Do I even want to know?”

“Hell of a bar fight late last night at The Orleans,” he said. “Apparently started over a couple guys at the pool table. There were four altogether, and they all fled the scene before we arrived. We’re still working on piecing together exactly what happened, but I’m hoping your man can help us out with that.” He tossed Athos a plastic evidence bag.

Athos turned it over, face utterly blank as he looked at Aramis’s badge and shield. 

“Found it on the floor under the pool table,” Terry added. 

Shoulders square, Athos eyed Terry as professional to another, and said, tone positively deadly, “I assure you he’ll cooperate fully.”

 

Aramis shuffled from the elevator onto their floor the next morning clutching a bottle of orange juice instead of his usually coffee. He was pale, and all the few hours of sleep he’d managed to catch had done was serve to make each and every one of his muscles ache. His bruises were cropping up, too, and he would have worn a scarf around his neck if he thought he could get away with it – there was nasty set of finger marks where his neck met his shoulder. 

He briefly remembered someone trying to force him to his knees, though he couldn’t be certain. What he _did_ know was that he’d broken more than a few fingers on said hand in order to get out of the hold. 

As for the cut on his back, well, he’d consider himself damn lucky if it didn’t get infected. He couldn’t reach back there well enough to keep it bandaged properly, and the best he was hoping for was that he didn’t start oozing through his layers. 

“Good morn – God, Aramis, are you alright?” Constance turned in her chair to look at him better.

“A little under the weather today, that’s all.” He saluted her with his orange juice, bypassed Treville’s office without so much as glancing in that direction, and headed for the conference room instead. 

He fell more than consciously sat in the chair and heaved a sigh of relief. 

“I wouldn’t get too comfortable, Aramis,” Athos said as he entered the room, closing the door behind him. “What did you do last night?”

“Went home and crossed another day off my calendar.” That part was true. It was the first thing he’d done after work, and he forced himself to sit up a little straighter, hiding his wince. 

“After that?”

A flush of fear so cold it was hot flooded through him. Athos couldn’t possibly know, could he? There was no way. He hadn’t gone outside his radius. It had been too dark in the bar for anyone to see him so no one could identify him, and he’d left before the cops could roll up. 

He searched Athos’s face for any sign this was just a test and found absolutely nothing. 

Aramis shrugged. “Just a usual night at home.”

Athos smiled tightly and the expression was damn near terrifying. “Where’s your badge and shield?”

He reached into his pocket and his fingers closed around – nothing. He checked the other one without looking fearful; his credentials were always on him. Usually in his pocket. He didn’t remember taking them out last night, but maybe he had. Before he’d gone to The Orleans, perhaps?

“At home, I think,” he said, inwardly proud of the way his voice didn’t tremble. He met Athos’s stare head-on, and a little defiantly. 

“Try again, Aramis,” Athos said coolly, tossing a plastic evidence bag on the table between them. “Where were you last night?”

Aramis finally unstuck his tongue from the roof of his very dry mouth to ask, “Where did you find that?”

“How many more times are you going to lie to me?”

He ducked his head, staring at his badge. Special Investigations and Tactical Response Unit. The Musketeers. They prided themselves on their honor, and with Athos looking at him like a bug under a microscope, like he couldn’t trust the words coming out of Aramis’s mouth, Aramis was anything but honorable.

He was tired of it. He trusted Athos with his life, the way Athos trusted him with his own every time he was perched in the rafters of some warehouse, just the three of them. 

Aramis would be damn lucky if he hadn’t shattered that to fucking pieces.

“I was at The Orleans last night,” Aramis said slowly, meeting Athos’s eyes. “Marsac called me sometime between nine-thirty and ten, and said he was…” Telling Athos would betray Marsac’s own situation and bad habits to someone in a position to give him consequences for it. 

_Or get him help with it,_ the voice in the back of his head wheedled. 

“What I tell you stays between us, right?”

Athos lifted a shoulder. “Maybe. I can’t promise you anything until I know everything.”

Aramis ran his left hand through his hair – his right no doubt wouldn’t tolerate the motion – and took a deep breath. “He called me last night and said he was going to lose his rent money. If he didn’t pay this month then his landlord was going to evict him, and he called me for help. So I went to help him. We played two games of doubles, and won back his rent money. I never did the betting,” he added quickly. “Marsac did that. I just…helped him.”

“Then what happened?” he prompted.

“The guys we were playing against called it beginner’s luck.” Aramis swallowed tightly. “That we couldn’t win three in a row. So I played him.”

“I’m assuming you won?” The corners of Athos’s mouth twitched.

“Trounced him.” His brief smile faded. “He then accused me of hustling. Which I hadn’t, because we didn’t play that third game for money. Marsac was gone at that point, and that’s when the other man threw the first punch. Typical bar brawl after that.”

Except, who the fuck brought a switchblade to a bare knuckle bar fight?

“And you ran from the police?”

“I was gone before they got there,” he admitted. “Took the long way back to the flat and…that was it.” He took another sip of his orange juice. 

Athos nodded. “Are you hurt?”

“Cuts and bruises. Aching muscles.” Aramis smiled slightly. “Nothing that won’t heal with time.”

Silence fell between them, thick and tense. Aramis couldn’t help but fear for his job at that point, though he was more worried about the state of things between himself and Athos. Athos was not a man to give his trust easily, and Aramis remembered how hard he’d worked to win it in the first place, to show him he was someone to be counted on. 

It had been Athos’s account and recommendation to Treville that saw the end of Aramis’s probationary period weeks before it was supposed to officially be. 

“Here’s what’s going to happen next,” Athos said, carefully enunciating his words as though speaking to a child. “You will write a full account of last night’s events for Sergeant DuBois. I will go attempt to smooth this over with Treville and hope he doesn’t see suspending you as a fitting punishment to go along with your next thirty days with your tracking anklet – which, I will be reviewing your movements on a daily basis.”

Aramis swallowed thickly, his mouth still feeling like a desert. 

“Which should be considerably less confusing than before as the judge will no doubt want to shrink your radius as the message hasn’t seemed to sink in yet.” He stood, and picked up the evidence bag. “I’ll hang onto this, too, when you’re not here so it doesn’t wind up somewhere it doesn’t belong again.”

He nodded dumbly as Athos left the conference room, presumably to get him some paper and a pen, and also to plead his case with Treville. 

Treville who could be scarily inventive when it came to consequences for his men and their stupidity. Aramis didn’t doubt the captain would see his actions as anything but. 

Resting his elbows on the table, he dropped his head to his hands and gripped his hair. He shouldn’t have bothered to get out of bed. Hell, maybe what he shouldn’t have done was go to that damn bar last night and save Marsac’s ass. 

Movement in the doorway caught his attention, and he looked up to see the man in question hovering awkwardly. 

“Hi,” Marsac said quietly. 

He’d heard from his sisters – on more than one occasion – that their mother had, when the situation called for it, one hell of a temper. They’d joked Aramis had been the only one not to inherit it, though the anger simmering in his belly told him differently. 

“Shut the door,” Aramis said, voice even through sheer force of will.

Marsac twitched at the tone. “What?”

“Shut the fucking door,” he hissed, rising unsteadily to his feet. The Garrison probably wasn’t the best place for this conversation but, fuck it, his professional life had taken a nosedive through his ability to be a good friend. 

And where the hell had been the Musketeer motto the previous night?

Marsac shut the door and then leaned against it, as though sensing he needed to stay as far from Aramis’s reach as possible. “Did you tell Athos? About – about my problem?”

Aramis jerked, eyebrows headed for his hairline. “I just told him _everything_ about last night.”

He paled beneath his dirty blonde hair. “Even about my rent?”

“Even about that. And I have another thirty days with this tracking anklet and house arrest when I’m not here.” He leaned heavily on the conference table. “Because I was a good friend last night and bailed your ass out of a jam.”

“You didn’t need to play that third game,” Marsac said, arms crossed defensively over his chest. 

“And you shouldn’t have been gambling your goddamn rent money!”

“That was my decision, Aramis. One I’ve paid for.”

Aramis snorted. “Really? Because I’m pretty sure I just fucking paid for it with my _badge_. Which they found on the floor of the bar because _you abandoned me in a fucking bar fight!_ ” He was aware he was yelling. He was also aware that Porthos, Constance, and some of the other Musketeers were watching through the glass windows of the conference room, and Aramis couldn’t find it in him to give a fuck.

“I thought you were right behind me!”

“Clearly I wasn’t! Did you even stop to make sure?”

Marsac wouldn’t meet his eyes; what little color was left in Aramis’s face drained completely. 

“You asshole,” Aramis muttered, vaulting onto the conference table and sliding on one leg across the polished surface. Marsac’s sense of self-preservation – and the knowledge that if Aramis got ahold of him, friend or no friend, he was in for a world of hurt – had him slipping out the conference room door as Aramis’s sneakers touched the carpet again. Ignoring the aches and pains, Aramis flung the door wide open and started after him. 

Porthos caught Aramis on his way by, arms around his chest like steel bands and pinning Aramis’s own against his torso. Aramis flailed, calling in Spanish after Marsac’s fleeing back. Porthos didn’t understand the words but he knew the tone, and Aramis scrabbled with his feet to get purchase on the floor. Tightening his hold, Porthos lifted the smaller man clear off the ground, back up a few steps, and slammed his friend front-first into the wall hard enough to jolt him into silence.

“I suggest you all find something else to do.” Athos’s voice, dry as dust, floated across the quiet. 

One by one the gawking Musketeers dispersed. Once everyone was gone, Porthos put Aramis back on his feet and gave him some breathing room. 

“Go sit and write every last detail of what happened last night,” Athos said, pressing a pad and pen into Aramis’s hand and gesturing to the conference room. “Then I am taking you home because you’ve got a three day suspension to serve and there will be no fuck ups this time. Am I clear?”

Aramis nodded dumbly, and limped his way back to where his orange juice still sat forlornly on the conference table. 

“Didn’t feel anything broken but he’s warm,” Porthos said quietly to Athos as they watched Aramis gingerly settle himself again, and get to writing. 

“Probably tired.” Athos crossed his arms over his chest. “A few days to himself might do him good.”

 

Someone had replaced his bedroom with a desert. He didn’t know how or why, but it was too damn hot. He’d take his damn boxers off if he wasn’t so tired; moving seemed like too much effort. Especially his arm. His am and shoulder felt too big for his skin, and he didn’t dare so much as twitch for fear of the agony that came with trying to move the limb in question. 

He moved his legs, trying to find a more comfortable position, and once again kicked the hell out of his other ankle with the one carrying the tracker. How many more days did he have? Maybe Athos would tell him.

Athos. Why was Athos coming? 

Work. Right. His suspension was up and he needed to go back to work. But before he could do that he needed a shower. He needed to move, too, and that just…fuck, he was tired. Too tired to be awake but not exhausted enough to actually sleep, especially with such heat. He was in the awkward in between stage of sleep and awake. 

Something cool touched his forehead and he whimpered in relief. 

“Jesus, Athos, he’s burning up.”

That sounded an awful lot like Porthos. But what was Porthos doing there? Did Athos bring him, too?

With a great feat of coordination and strength, Aramis peeled open his eyes. Everything was a little hazy around the edges, but there in front of him, phone practically glued to his ear, was Athos. 

“His fever’s sky high,” Athos said. “And he’s – wait, he’s awake. Hey, Aramis. Can you tell me what hurts?”

Did he want the short list or the long list, because Aramis swore every bone and muscle in his body ached. 

“He’s awake but he’s not exactly all there yet.” Athos ran his fingers through his hair. “No – wait, hold on. Porthos? Can you roll him?”

Porthos’s firm yet gentle grip on his upper body left Aramis little wiggle room, and he was rolled up onto his side and then partially onto his belly. 

“Found it, Athos. Pretty nasty knife wound that, judging by appearances, is infected.”

Oh. That. That wasn’t too bad, was it? He’d kept it as clean and bandaged as he could considering he couldn’t really reach it properly. 

“Right, we’ll be waiting.” Athos hung up and shoved the phone in his pocket, looking at a space clear over Aramis’s shaking shoulder. “Ambulance is on its way. They’ll do a better assessment than we can.” He crouched, better entering Aramis’s line of sight. “Why didn’t you tell me about this when I asked if you were hurt?”

“Athos…” Porthos’s voice rolled like steady thunder from somewhere behind him. “Save _that_ for when he can actually hold a conversation. I don’t think he’s entirely with us yet.”

Aramis wanted to protest. He wanted to apologize, too, loudly and repeatedly. What he did instead was close his eyes and let the darkness take him away again.

 

Despite all outward appearances to the contrary, Aramis wasn’t sick enough to warrant a bed in the ICU. Nor, however, was he well enough to be left too much on his own in a regular room. As a result, Athos and Porthos were becoming well-versed in the workings of the step-down unit, a ward handily placed between the ICU and the rooms for those on the mend enough to not need such constant supervision.

And here, at least, they could sit with Aramis as long as they liked. 

Not that he was overly conscious for it. Between the high fever and the heavy duty antibiotics they had him on to combat the infection, Aramis spent most of his time either asleep or with his glazed eyes open and looking into the middle distance. He was aware enough to know he wasn’t alone, but he couldn’t hold a thought much less a conversation for any longer than approximately five minutes. 

Day three of his hospital stay found him awake and aware enough to try and dislodge the oxygen tube under his nose. 

“No, Aramis,” Athos said quietly, pinning the flailing hand gently to the mattress. “You need that. That has to stay.” As it made the tension leak out of his muscles, Athos left his hand overtop Aramis’s. 

Aramis burrowed the side of his head further into his pillow, heaved a ragged sigh, and promptly went back to sleep. 

“He wake up at all?” Porthos asked roughly twenty minutes later when he came back with coffee for both him and Athos. 

“A bit. Enough to poke at his oxygen.” He looked at the IV bag hanging from the wall above the head of the bed. “Not enough to realize he’s got wires and lines where he probably doesn’t want them.” 

Porthos chuckled. He’d been the recipient of a catheter a time or two before, and they weren’t a picnic once the body was aware enough of them to protest it. 

Athos hooked his foot around the hard, uncomfortable chair and pulled it close enough to him to sit down, his warm hand still covering Aramis’s cooler one. 

The morning of day five saw Aramis with enough of his faculties about him to be able to sit up. That was how Athos and Porthos found him when they stopped in to visit before work – Treville had only allocated them so many days to make sure their friend and team member wasn’t going to croak – and they had to be at the office to start the ball rolling on their next case. It was a joint effort with the RCMP, and while Athos couldn’t say he was thrilled about it, he at least wanted to make sure there would be no screw ups on the Musketeer end of things. Richelieu’s men sometimes left a bit to be desired on the police-work front.

“Hey, ‘Mis,” Porthos said, glad to see some color back in Aramis’s cheeks that wasn’t the bright red of a too-high fever. 

“Hi.” His voice was raspy from disuse, and he had one leg sticking out from under the blanket. Coincidentally it was the one with the tracker, and an angry red light blinked back at him. “Red.”

“You’re outside of your radius,” Athos said, pulling the chair over to sit closer to Aramis’s bedside. “Don’t worry about it, we know where you are.”

He scratched his beard with the hand not sporting the IV. “What happened?”

“Your souvenir from the bar fight at The Orleans became infected,” Porthos said dryly, leaning carefully on the railing at the foot of the bed. “You should have told us.”

Aramis leaned carefully back against the multitude of pillows behind him. “Didn’t want to make you mad.”

 _Mad_ might have been the word Aramis used, but Athos heard, _Didn’t want to disappoint you further._

“We would rather know about your injuries, no matter how small or how you might have gotten them, than find you unresponsive and trying to bake your brain from the inside.” Athos tentatively, and in much the same way as a few days earlier, reached out and covered Aramis’s hand with his own. “Let’s not do that again, alright?”

He nodded and drew his knees up so Porthos could sit on the end of the mattress. “House arrest?”

Athos let out a soft exhalation that for anyone else would have been a snort, and said, “Don’t worry about that right now. Take your meds, try not to be obstinate, and do as your doctors tell you.”

Seemingly satisfied, Aramis rested heavily against the raised back of the bed, wincing slightly. Porthos helped him shift partially onto his side and propped a pillow behind him to ease the pressure on his tender right shoulder. 

“’M tired of being tired,” he slurred. 

“Which is why you should sleep, ‘Mis,” Porthos said, twitching an unruly piece of hair off Aramis’s forehead. “You wouldn’t want to if your body didn’t need it.”

They waited until his eyes slipped shut and his breathing evened out, though he fought it every step of the way. Only when the hand beneath his was truly lax did Athos let go and stand. 

“Few more days and he’ll be full of his usual piss and vinegar.” Porthos adjusted the sheet and blanket more securely around Aramis’s chest, mindful of the bandages beneath his hospital gown. “Then he’ll be so bored he’ll be begging for anything to do, including desk duty.”

Athos took one last look at Aramis before he went out the door into the hallway. “Then he won’t mind being the official liaison between our unit and Richelieu’s.”

“Oh yeah,” he said around his chuckles, “he’ll absolutely love that.”

 

After eight days in the hospital, a requisite three days of further recovery at home – where he slept on the couch for most of it, between bouts of online movie-watching and pacing from the kitchen door to the bedroom for something to do – he walked onto their floor at the Garrison bright and early one Monday morning with Athos trailing more sedately behind him. He didn’t even care he still had a full sixteen days of his tracking anklet left, nor that those sixteen days were, essentially, house arrest when he wasn’t with Athos, Porthos, or Treville. 

The judge had made it very clear Aramis didn’t want to find out what would happen should there be another incident before those thirty days were up. And that wasn’t including what Treville would add to it. 

He was still a little pale, and currently more inclined to drink orange juice rather than coffee, but he was in working condition and he’d finally shaken the last of the antibiotics. 

“Happy reading,” Athos said, slapping a rather thick file folder in front of him once he’d settled at the conference table. 

“What’s this?” Aramis thumbed it open, rifling through the first few pages. He blanched when he reached the personnel page. “Oh, hell no.”

“You have a scheduled conference call at one this afternoon with Jusac to work out some staging details.” He dropped another file on the table next to the previous one. “This is how I would like to run things. No doubt he has his own way. Do convince him he needs to adopt a Musketeer mindset.”

“One can’t even convince these idiots that playing in traffic isn’t a good idea,” Aramis said, gesturing vaguely. “This is punishment, isn’t it?”

Athos paused on his way out the door. He leaned against the jamb, a thoughtful look on his face, and finally said, “No. If it were punishment you’d be dealing with Richelieu and the Commissioner. This is just…an unpleasant necessity.” He dipped his chin, and disappeared into the hallway, presumably heading toward Treville’s office. 

Aramis gave in to temptation and let his head thunk onto the papers. 

 

The joint operation went off without a hitch. Aramis had been tempted to punch Jusac in the face for the entire two weeks leading up to it, and only a fine sense of decorum kept him from accidentally shooting the man once they were all in place and waiting for the go signal. Considering Aramis hit what he aimed at 99.9% of the time, no one would have believed it was an accident, and Athos hated extraneous paperwork with the passion of a thousand exploding suns. 

Hence the only people Aramis sited through his rifle were the bad guys, and even then things – blissfully, for once – went seamlessly well. It was that same smugness of a job well done that allowed him to walk by Jusac and his men without so much as a glance in their direction when they started in whether or not the Musketeers were made up of reformed criminals or they had made an exceptions for him. 

_Two days_ , he thought, putting his rifle in the back of Athos’s department vehicle. _Two more days._

He closed the rear hatch and climbed into the backseat, briefly meeting Athos’s eyes in the mirror. Hidden beneath the carefully bland expression was a hint of pride, and Aramis leaned against the window with a grin. 

 

Aramis had given up all pretense of being productive for the afternoon. He was jittery, like he’d had too much caffeine, and he kept smiling stupidly. Porthos had finally given up attempting to distract him with conversation, and the pair of them were watching the conference room door with more attention than necessary as they waited for Athos to get done with his meeting. 

Once every few weeks the leader from each team came together in meeting with Treville to review successes, failures, weakness, strengths, and try to improve the efficiency of the SITRU. _That_ meeting had actually been done about twenty minutes ago, but because Athos had the honor of being Treville’s second, there was always some more details for them to go over. 

Waiting patiently went out the window about five minutes later, and Aramis began pacing between the conference table and the open door. 

“Aramis?”

He froze; Sergeant DuBois stood in the doorway. 

“Have a seat and let me see your tracker.”

Porthos moved enough for Aramis to ease onto the conference table, barely resisting the urge to swing his feet like he’d done when he’d visited the doctor’s office as a child. He rolled up his pant leg, the cheery green light on the black box winking up at him from above his Chucks. 

“I’m assuming I don’t have to tell you to behave yourself the next time you’re around a pool table?” DuBois asked as he took a small remote from his pocket. 

“No, sir,” Aramis said, smiling as the light went dark and DuBois unclipped it from around his leg. 

“Good. Have a nice afternoon, officer.” He set the tracker on the table next to Aramis.

“You’re not taking that with you?” Porthos asked as Aramis picked it up, inspecting the bit of technology he’d been saddled with for nearly two months. 

“Athos wants to hang onto it,” DuBois said from the doorway. “I believe his words were ‘just in case.’”

Aramis dropped it back to the table like it could have bitten him; Porthos looked between the retreating sergeant and Aramis’s stricken expression. 

“I hope it won’t need to be used again,” Athos said, a hint of amusement coloring his words. “Aramis.” He tossed something very much like a wallet in Aramis’s direction. 

He caught it easily, and opened it to see his badge and shield. 

“There’s a dead body down by the docks,” Athos continued. “We have work to do gentlemen.”

Porthos clapped his hands together; Aramis hopped down off the table, and the three of them piled into the elevator under the ever-watchful eye of their captain.


	11. An Unfortunate Necessity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Treville’s attention snapped to his second in command, a wordless order for Athos to sit. He did, of course, keeping a straight face from years of practice and doing his level best not to fidget under the older man’s stare._
> 
> _“Do I even want to know?” the captain asked, picking up the forms Athos had tried to nonchalantly drop off. He read them quickly, then looked up sharply. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”_
> 
>    
> Or: d'Artagnan has his tonsils out, Aramis gets his wisdom teeth removed, and Porthos, Athos, and Constance are along for the ride.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two updates from me two days in a row. No, hell hasn't frozen over, I've just managed to finish fics in a timely manner. 
> 
> This started off as something fluffy and kind of whumpy, got kind of melancholy in the middle (because Athos), and I made references to Episode 1 "Friends and Enemies". You'll know it when you see it. Also, the bit about Athos's citizenship is something I did look up (because I wanted to get it right). So that should be accurate. If it's not, please don't hesitate to let me know. 
> 
> I figured we needed something light and kind of fluffy before the other more ripping-the-feels-apart pieces I have coming actually get here. 
> 
> Don't own a damn thing (other than SITRU) which, if you wanna play in the sandbox, go right ahead. Thank you so much for reading.

It had been Athos’s intention to slip the papers on the edge of Treville’s desk and, without looking like he was running, run the other way back out the door of his office to the conference room where the other three members of his team were holed up, waiting. 

Of course, like the best laid plans ever devised in the Garrison, it didn’t happen that way. 

Treville’s attention snapped to his second in command, a wordless order for Athos to sit. He did, of course, keeping a straight face from years of practice and doing his level best not to fidget under the older man’s stare. 

“Do I even want to know?” the captain asked, picking up the forms Athos had tried to nonchalantly drop off. He read them quickly, then looked up sharply. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I wish I was,” Athos said. “The doctor’s impressed d’Artagnan can even still speak his throat’s so inflamed, and Aramis…” He trailed off, well aware that Aramis’s worsening mood had started to show despite his best efforts. Coupled with a lack of sleep from the pain in his jaw radiating up into his skull, it was a miracle he hadn’t shot anybody who annoyed him. And Aramis had been annoyed for approximately the past week and a half. 

Mostly since the Orajel had stopped working, though that was neither here nor there. 

“Who’s going with who?” Treville asked tiredly. 

“We haven’t quite figured that out yet.” Athos scrubbed at the days-old stubble adorning his neck under the line of his beard, well aware he was pushing the regulations by being in such a scruffy state. “We’re leaning toward me going with d’Artagnan and Porthos going with Aramis.”

It went unspoken between the two of them that Porthos could, if necessary, literally manhandle Aramis into the room his surgery would be performed in. He most likely wouldn’t have to, but if he did, Porthos would know the best way to ease cooperation out of him before it turned into a contest of brute strength. Once it got to that point there was no doubt who would be the winner, as the only time Aramis had ever bested Porthos in a hand-to-hand combat contest was the time he accidentally kneed the bigger man in the balls. Aramis had then proceeded to thrown his already threadbare status as a _gentleman brawler_ out the window and literally sat on Porthos’s back to keep him down. 

“Will there be any problems?”

With that lot? Who the fuck knew, in all seriousness. Athos didn’t think Treville would enjoy the candor, and settled for a bland, “I don’t think so but one never can be too sure with them.”

One never could, either. d’Artagnan could be the one to totally freak about his impending tonsillitis while Aramis took to relinquishing himself to the medical community with all the grace, poise, and dignity of a beauty queen. 

Athos didn’t expect it to happen that way, but a man could dream, couldn’t he?

 

Porthos didn’t have the heart to say anything to Aramis about the jackhammer routine his left leg was doing. He knew the reason. It was a nervous habit, born from the knowledge that things were about to be taken out of Aramis’s own hands and placed into someone else’s. Some kinds of control were easy to let go of – and Aramis would do it willingly – but this? This was difficult. 

Aramis’s mind saw it as him giving over his life into hands that didn’t belong to Athos, Porthos, d’Artagnan, or Treville. 

“They’ll make your jaw stop hurting, ‘Mis,” Porthos said quietly, aiming for being the voice of reason. “Docs said that’ll make your headaches go away, too.”

He ran his fingers through his hair, practically bending in half to put his elbows on his thighs. “I know.”

Porthos draped his arm casually across the back of Aramis’s chair, mindful not to touch him. He’d probably startle badly, and the last thing they needed was for him to be more upset than he already was. 

“How’s d’Artagnan doing?” Aramis asked before the silence between them could get too thick.

“Athos’s last text said they had just taken him into the OR.” Which meant that Athos was probably pacing the surgical waiting room like a caged animal wishing he had a couple fingers of whiskey. 

None of them did surgical waiting well. Aramis had gone damn near batshit crazy when Porthos’s appendix had exploded and the only way for Athos to get him calm was to threaten to make him leave. Considering Athos and Aramis were more closely matched physically, it would have made for a hell of an interesting fight. Porthos put it mentally on a list of things to do the next time they had a sparring session at the Garrison.

A petite nurse appeared by the reception desk with a clipboard in her hands. “Rene?”

Porthos put a firm hand at the small of Aramis’s back to get him moving, and followed him all the way down the corridor to the room they would actually perform the surgery. 

Aramis sat heavily in the chair and reached out, snagging a fistful of Porthos’s t-shirt with white knuckles. 

“Easy, ‘Mis,” he murmured, one hand wrapped around Aramis’s own free one to keep it trapped against the arm of the chair as a nurse started an IV. “Look at me. Look at me, Aramis.”

Wide brown eyes locked on his own and Porthos took a deep breath. Aramis matched it, flinching at the application of an alcohol swab to the crook of his elbow. 

“Hey,” Porthos said, drawing Aramis’s wandering focus back to his face. “You know what?”

Aramis blinked, and twisted his head away from the breathing apparatus the same nurse tried to settle over his nose and mouth. 

“No.” Safe with the knowledge that Aramis wouldn’t let go of his shirt until someone made him, Porthos used his free hand to gently but firmly grip Aramis by the chin and turn his head. “Come on, Aramis. Come on, breathe with me.” He sucked in a large, exaggerated breath; Aramis did the same, nose twitching. Porthos watched him take another inhale, slightly longer this time as whatever was in the gas started to take effect. 

“That’s it,” Porthos murmured, letting go of Aramis’s chin to run his fingers through the unruly hair. “I’ll see you when you wake up, okay? Promise.”

The back of his skull hit the headrest with a muted thump and tension leaked out of his muscles. Slowly, the grip on the front of Porthos’s shirt lessened, though Aramis fought like hell to keep his eyes blinking open. 

“d’Artagnan’s not going to be able to talk for about a week,” Porthos said, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. 

Aramis couldn’t have moved if he truly tried, though he aimed for a smile similar to the one Porthos wore, and missed. His head lolled forward as his eyes closed. Porthos, heedless of the nurses still puttering about the room, leaned in and pressed a lingering kiss to Aramis’s cool forehead. He retreated back to the waiting room with the intent to call Athos and let him know Aramis was out cold and the oral surgeon was about to do his thing.

 

Aramis woke up slowly and didn’t have a clue where he was. He jerked away from the hands reaching for him, pressing back into the chair. His tongue felt about three sizes too big for his mouth, and he flinched when someone made an attempt to get a hand on him again.

 _”Easy, Rene,”_ someone said, and it took a moment for Aramis’s sluggish mind to realize he was being spoken to in Spanish. _”We just want to help you move out of the chair and make sure you don’t fall. Can we do that?”_

He turned his flagging attention toward the speaker. She looked vaguely familiar, and there was nothing hidden in her smile. In a rather reverse gesture, he took her proffered hand and allowed her to help him to his feet. She led him across the hall to another room, one with just a bench seat. He sat, hands in his lap and stared up at her. 

_”Your friend is on his way back. He was out in the waiting room,”_ she added hurriedly at Aramis’s sound of distress. 

Porthos appeared in the doorway, literally overshadowing the nurse by a good foot. “Hey, you.”

Aramis blinked tiredly, twitching as something wet landed on his shirt front. He dipped his chin, and nearly overbalanced forward onto his face. Porthos and the nurse moved together – there was very nearly a bottleneck through the doorway – and his longer reach edged her out slightly as he caught Aramis by the shoulder, careful to stay well away from his heavily swollen cheeks and jaw. 

_”You’re drooling, love,”_ Porthos murmured, gently easing Aramis into an upright position and leaning him back toward the wall behind him. _”That’s all that is. Ready to go?”_

He nodded, and reached out again to anchor a hand in the front of Porthos’s shirt. Porthos let him, and heaved him upright, waiting until he felt Aramis’s thighs accept his weight to let go. Aramis, clearly with his own agenda, suckered himself to Porthos’s side and hung on. 

“Watch for signs of heavy bleeding,” the nurse said. “That’ll happen if he happens to rupture his sutures and get dry socket.” She took a folded piece of paper from her pocket and handed it to him. “Soft foods and liquids.” The next thing she handed him was a prescription slip. “Vicodin and a high dose ibuprofen for his pain. He’s on Vicodin, and that should wear off right about the time the Novacaine does.”

Aramis sagged; Porthos wrapped an arm around his waist and hauled him further upright. 

“That should be about it,” she said cheerfully. “Any problems don’t hesitate to call us, okay?”

Porthos nodded, and began the task of herding a docile, fairly unresponsive Aramis toward the door. 

 

Athos waited with barely disguised impatience for the nurses to get d’Artagnan settled. He hadn’t come to yet, and Athos wanted to be there when he did so he didn’t do something idiotic like try to speak. He hadn’t heard from Porthos after the quick text saying Aramis had come through his wisdom teeth removal – all four, two impacted close to the surface and two trying to come in sideways – with flying colors and that they had given him Vicodin. Aramis on Vicodin was almost terrifying because he was so…he was almost childlike. He didn’t say much of anything, followed instructions better than he did when he was in complete control of all his faculties, and was, well, malleable. 

An Aramis on Vicodin was an Aramis that Porthos could plop somewhere, tell him not to move, and an hour later Aramis would still be sitting there. There was the good chance he would be asleep, as the painkiller also made him drowsy. 

In any event, it was better than hyper-Aramis. 

He was finally allowed into the room, and took a seat by d’Artagnan’s bed. The heart rate monitor beeped reassuringly, and Athos felt something loosen in his chest. 

It dissolved completely when Porthos appeared hand-in-hand with a swaying Aramis in the doorway. 

“I thought you were going to take him home,” Athos said.

“He wouldn’t settle in the car,” Porthos said, steering Aramis toward the other chair, one modeled more along the lines of a recliner, in case the hospital patient wished to be a little more upright and out of bed for a time. “Kept muttering about afros and darth, and I figured he meant you and d’Artagnan.”

Aramis let out a string of mumbled consonants and looked pointedly between Athos and d’Artagnan’s sleeping form. Athos looked at Porthos for a translation; Porthos shrugged, and settled Aramis into the chair.

“Stay, ‘Mis. Okay?” He ducked into the bathroom to retrieve a hand towel. “Here, we don’t need that many blood spots on your shirt.”

Athos watched as Porthos nimbly sidestepped Aramis’s clumsy defenses to shove one end of the towel down the front of his shirt like a bib. The younger man tugged it, forehead creased in annoyance, until Porthos caught his trembling fingers with one hand. 

“Leave it, Aramis,” he said gently. “They’re right here and they aren’t going anywhere, okay?” He ran his fingers through Aramis’s unruly hair. 

He gingerly leaned his head back against the seat, positioned in such a way to look at both Athos and d’Artagnan. It allowed Athos to notice Aramis didn’t have a line of sight on the door. Nor did he seem inclined to do anything about it. 

It was then he realized with a jolt that Aramis’s trust in them was absolute. He trusted Athos and Porthos to keep both himself and d’Artagnan safe when they were incapable of doing so themselves. 

“Figured it out then, didn’t ya?” Porthos asked quietly as he sat on the heater slightly behind Athos and to the right. 

“I never thought we’d get anywhere near it,” Athos admitted. The man who was dozing and drooling looking like a squirrel secreting nuts for the winter with his back to the door was also the same one who, at the beginning of their working career, wouldn’t let anyone come within three feet of his rifle. Now he practically threw Betsy at whoever was nearest if he was in a particular hurry. It was the same man who had kept his blood family close to his chest and out of sight. Now Athos could proudly say he was “Uncle Olly” to one Danielle d’Herblay, Aramis’s only niece. 

No, Athos honestly never thought they would get to this point. 

“Never thought you’d ever smile, either, but you crack one of those about once a month now,” Porthos said lightly. He blocked the half-hearted punch Athos threw his direction with a chuckle. 

Athos scooted his chair back a little; Porthos set his feet on the rung of it, and the pair of them settled in to wait.

 

It was probably a horrible misuse of hospital property, not that they gave a shit. d’Artagnan had looked so miserable after he’d woken up – and was properly awake, rather than in and out multiple times – and Aramis never could stand to see one of the three of them in pain. Whatever he’d said had come out a garbled mess of consonants and, still wearing the towel like a bib, he shimmied onto the hospital bed next to their youngest team member. The pair of them were slim enough to make it work comfortably, and it was more excitement than they could handle, apparently, as they dozed again. 

Right about that time, as Athos was reading the newspaper out of sheer boredom – and for the police blotter, to see what idiots they might have to deal with that were still populating Quebec City – Constance arrived. 

“Hey.” She deposited a small vase of flowers on the rolling table by the side of the bed and did a double take when she actually looked at the occupants. “Is – what happened to Aramis’s face?”

“Had his wisdom teeth removed,” Porthos said. “All four.”

Constance winced. 

“That’s about the shape of things,” Athos said dryly from behind his newspaper. 

“He had them removed today?” she asked, sliding between Athos’s outstretched legs and the bed in order to press her palm to d’Artagnan’s forehead. He was a little warm to the touch, and he shifted in his sleep at the brush of her fingertips, resettling more heavily against Aramis’s shoulder. 

Porthos – and Athos, who had discarded his newspaper at that point – watched as Constance very carefully used the corner of the towel to wipe away a new strand of bloody drool from the corner of Aramis’s slack mouth. He didn’t so much as twitch.

“My God,” she murmured, “what do they have him on? Horse tranquilizers?”

“Vicodin,” Porthos said matter-of-factly. “Makes him bendable.”

“Makes him stupid,” Athos mouthed. He easily dodged the swat aimed for his head from Porthos, and stood to give Constance his chair. 

“Those poor boys.” She sat, newspaper in her lap for something to keep her hands busy. “They’re going to be miserable.”

“They _are_ miserable.” He glanced at his watch, then Porthos. “What time is he supposed to have more pain killers?”

Porthos looked at the clock on the wall. “Uh, about one-thirty or so. Should I wake him up to give them to him?”

“I would,” she said. “Keep him ahead of the pain rather than behind it.” She looked between two questioning stares and added, “My second oldest brother had his removed when he was about twenty-three. We let him sleep through his next set of painkillers once and it made him agitated because it took forever to kick in. Keep ahead of it and Aramis shouldn’t have the same problem.”

Well. That settled that. 

“Feed him something before you give him the Vicodin,” Athos added, shuddering. He himself had been privy to the stupidity that was taking painkiller after painkiller on an empty stomach – he’d broken his arm in two places and had required a metal pin to help it heal – and he’d thrown up as a result. Aramis didn’t need that. 

“Well, yeah,” Porthos muttered. He looked at the bed and immediately stood. “Hey, d’Art.”

Constance and Athos moved as one; d’Artagnan blinked up at the three of them, briefly raising the hand not squished between his body and Aramis’s in greeting. 

“How do you feel?” Constance asked. 

He made a see-saw motion, then gestured to his throat, followed by a thumbs down. 

“That’s expected, though, isn’t it?” She sat delicately on the edge of the bed, and slid her hand in his. 

d’Artagnan nodded. He rolled his head carefully to glance at Aramis – still sleeping, temple resting carefully against the side of d’Artagnan’s head – and then looked back at Constance, a clear question in his eyes. 

“Wisdom teeth surgery, remember?” Porthos said. “Had his this morning when you went in for yours.”

He nodded again, eyelids drooping. 

“You should sleep if you want to,” she said quietly. “We’ll still be here when you wake up.”

Seemingly satisfied, d’Artagnan made himself comfortable against Aramis again and drifted. 

 

Constance had shooed the other three out sometime in the late afternoon. Her husband was away on business – as usual – and wasn’t going to be back for quite some time. She’d agreed to stay with d’Artagnan for a little while longer, until visiting hours were officially over.

“Come for coffee,” Athos said, then immediately froze, as though he’d just realized what he’d said. 

“Are you sure?” Constance asked, the pair of them standing in the hallway and watched Porthos herd and unsteady Aramis toward the elevators, hand in hand. While Athos had gotten better at being open with all them, there were times when he still seemed to need his personal space as much as the company. 

He took a deep breath and glanced down the corridor; Aramis had a fistful of Porthos’s t-shirt at the small of his back while Porthos had his arm carefully around the slimmer shoulders. The pair of them were staying with Athos for a few days – in case anything went wrong with the aftermath of Aramis’s surgery and they needed help – and he found he was looking forward to it. 

“I’m sure,” he said, the corners of his mouth turned upright. 

Constance smiled easily. “Alright then. I’ll be over after they throw me out.”

Which was why Athos leaned against his kitchen counter next to the twelve-cup coffee pot waiting for her arrival and watching Aramis painstakingly eat his way through a small container of vanilla yogurt. He’d wanted ice cream – or, at least, that’s what Athos _thought_ he wanted – but he’d been convinced that yogurt would be better nutritionally for him and help with his healing process. 

Whether or not that was true remained to be seen, and Aramis wasn’t enough in his right mind to question it. 

He was also trying to carry on a lucid conversation, though the success of that was up for debate.

“Shashbuckshlers,” Aramis said, waving his freshly-licked spoon like a sword. “Lishk…th’ olsh Mushkesheers.”

“Right,” Porthos said, grinning widely. He’d gotten better at translating Aramis’s mangled words once he’d started to listen how he’d had to in order to understand Danni when she’d first started speaking. There wasn’t a whole lot of difference between Aramis’s adult speech and a toddler’s at the moment, a point he found secretly hysterical.

“They protected king and country,” Athos added, smirking openly. 

“Yesh.” Aramis put his mostly-eaten yogurt container on the safety of the counter, well aware Athos hated unnecessary messes, and assumed what he thought to be a swordsman’s fighting stance, spoon held out at the ready. 

“Attacking an unarmed opponent defies every principle of chivalry.” Athos hopped onto the counter to better stay out of the way, knowing it was something he never would have done had the two idiots in his kitchen not come into his life. 

Porthos reached back and retrieved a salad fork from the silverware drawer. He held it up over his shoulder for Athos to see. 

“Close enough,” he said with a smile.

“En garde,” Porthos said, bowing slightly from the waist, fork held at the ready. 

Aramis’s foggy mind struggled briefly to understand the French. “Ish – new whash?”

“Now I would come up,” he said, swinging the fork in a slow arc. “You would parry.” He waited for Aramis to move the spoon up so they met handle to handle. “Down.” A counter-arc down, met with another parry. “Good. He’s a natural, isn’t he, Athos?”

“He is.” Athos, slightly in awe of the blinding, lopsided smile Aramis was giving him, reached for the bandana on top of the fridge to his left. Porthos was forever leaving them all over the place; exactly how many he had was a mystery, but there were at least three that found their way routinely into Athos’s laundry pile. “He could be fighting off pirates in the Caribbean.” He tied the bandana around his own head, aiming for the way he’d seen Porthos do it thousands of times. “Do I look like a pirate?”

Porthos stared, momentarily dumbstruck; Aramis giggled. 

“Fearsome,” he said when he finally found his words again. 

“Capshin Ashos.” Aramis bowed from the waist. 

“Yeah,” Porthos added, “the most fearsome pirate you’ve never heard of.”

“Really?” Athos hopped off the counter and snatched two wooden spoons from the crock by the stove on his way by. He tossed one to Porthos, who discarded his fork in the sink with a clatter in favor of the larger…weapon. “You fenced?”

“For a semester or two,” he admitted, sinking into his stance. “To try and impress a guy in my world history class who was an Age of Sail fanatic.”

Athos brought the spoon up in front of him like a gentleman of old, preparing for an honorable duel. After a quick glance to make sure Aramis had retreated somewhere slightly out of the way – he sat cross-legged in one of Athos’s kitchen chairs, elbows resting on his knees and watching raptly – he dropped it to the side to signal he was ready. 

Porthos did much the same, and the kitchen filled with a sort of playful tension, waiting for one of them to make the first move.

 

Constance let herself into Athos’s flat with the practice of someone who had done it multiple times already. She’d been his saving grace after a few spectacularly bad benders, but since the addition of Aramis and now d’Artagnan to his partnership with Porthos, she had to admit he was mellowing out. He was letting go of the things he couldn’t change and focusing, far more than he ever had, on what was in front of him in the present. 

He couldn’t change his past. None of them could. All they could do was try to make it a little more bearable for him. 

There was laughter coming from the kitchen, and an odd clacking sound. She let her shoes on the mat and crept barefoot on the hardwood floor, circling wider than she normally would have since Aramis had his back to her and she didn’t want to startle him. He saw her; she took that as permission to stand behind him and drape her arms over his shoulders. He rested his head back against her chest with a sigh. It was then that she took in the sight in front of her. 

Athos, with a bandana around his head that seemed hell bent on slipping over one eye, was fencing Porthos with a wooden spoon. Their expression ranged between apprehensive, mock serious, and highly amused. 

“Do I even want to know?” she asked softly. 

“Ashos ish a pirash.” Aramis said it so matter-of-factly she was hard-pressed to contain her own giggles. 

“And what does that make Porthos?”

Porthos who had very nearly been disarmed by Athos, and was clutching his spoon for dear life. 

“A Mushkesheer.” He hummed contentedly as Constance rocked them gently side to side. 

“I thought Athos was a Musketeer, too?” She caught his eye and grinned; he nearly had his head taken off by one of Porthos’s wild swings. 

That seemed to stump Aramis a little bit, until he said, “Hesh a pirash Mushkesheer.” He mulled the words over, and then, more definitively, repeated them. “Yesh. A pirash Mushkesheer.”

Constance giggled, and pressed a fond kiss to the top of Aramis’s head. 

Porthos’s spoon went flying, rebounding off the microwave to clatter onto the counter. 

Athos, in a perfect imitation of Louis, the Public Safety Commissioner, said, “Ha-ha, I win, Canada beats…France.”

“That’s a little ironic, don’t you think?” Porthos asked. “Considering you were born in France?”

Color highlighted Athos’s cheeks. “Yes, well, I’m also Canadian.”

“Yoush nashuralished?” Aramis asked. 

“No. My father was born in Quebec and is a Canadian citizen, which, though I was born in France, makes me one, too. My parents have dual citizenship in both Canada and France,” he said, fiddling with the wooden spoon. “We moved here to Quebec City when my father started his practice again when I was around four. Thomas was born here.”

He remembered that day vividly. His father had sat him down on the couch and informed he was a big brother now, that he needed to look out for Thomas. Then they had put his baby brother in his arms, shown carefully how to hold him by his mother, and knew, once he’d looked at the infant, there was nothing else in the world that mattered as much as Thom. 

“Athos?” 

Constance’s careful voice broke him out of his memory, and he sucked in a hard breath. 

“You mentioned something about coffee?” she said gently. 

“I did.” He shuffled back the few steps and hit the button on the machine. It immediately hissed and gurgled, and soon the scent of brewing coffee filled the kitchen. 

“How was d’Artagnan?” Porthos asked. 

“Someone gave him some paper and a pencil. He said his pain level was decent, though he was getting tired of eating fat free sherbet and wants real ice cream.” She shrugged carefully, mindful that Aramis’s head was heavy against her sternum in such a way that he was probably asleep. “I told him I’d take him for ice cream when he got out, and then we found a movie to watch on TV until visiting hours were over. How’s this one?”

“Sleeping,” Athos and Porthos said together. 

“Clearly.” She continued the gentle rocking motion that had probably been his downfall in the first place. “Other than that?”

Porthos shrugged. “Eats a little bit. Takes his meds. Drools like he’s teething. The usual.”

Athos brought some coffee mugs out of the cupboard and surveyed the three thoroughly invading his kitchen and his life. There was a space evident – d’Artagnan was missing from it – but otherwise there, in front of him, was the family he hadn’t wanted and somehow needed. 

Aramis woke himself with a snort and a flail, muttering something incomprehensible and nearly falling off his chair. God knew they might not have been perfect, but they were Athos’s and he was theirs. 

Some days he was still getting used to the idea. 

 

In all the commotion and hubbub surrounding d’Artagnan’s tonsillectomy and Aramis’s wisdom teeth removal, followed by their respective recoveries, Athos had damn near forgotten Treville had arranged for a tour of their Garrison for some high schoolers interested in a career in law enforcement. 

Team One was the only one without an active case at the moment, and therefore elected to play the gracious host. Which would have been fine had d’Artagnan not still sounded like he chain smoked two packs a day and Aramis didn’t have finger-shaped bruises on either side of his cheeks and jaw above his beard. 

The pair of them were a sorry sight, and still on the tail end of medical leave. 

Meaning Athos was the poor idiot who got to be thrown around the practice mat by Porthos when it came to the demonstration of part of the tactical portion of their unit’s name. 

It was Karma, he decided, staring at the ceiling of the gym as his lungs struggled to remember to fucking breathe after he’d been introduced back-first to the mat yet again, for earlier in the week in his kitchen when he’d disarmed Porthos with a wooden spoon. 

The man in question leaned over him, partially blocking out the fluorescent lights above, and asked, “You good?”

“Fine,” Athos wheezed. 

“Lovely.”

Athos’s next thought, as he was hauled upright by his shirtfront, had him wondering what exactly he’d done in a past life to deserve this. 

 

“Can you even drink again yet?” d’Artagnan asked as they headed for their usual table at The Wren. 

“Partial liquid diet and no drugs, if that’s what you mean,” Aramis said cheekily, smiling only a fraction of his usual grin. Too much movement still hurt, though he had the feeling he was doing much better than Athos. 

Athos who was moving like a man well into his eighties as he sank gratefully into his chair. “Did you have to thrown me quite so hard?”

“It was supposed to be believable,” Porthos said. “The captain was watching, too.”

Treville had stood at the back of the high schoolers, and if Athos remembered correctly – and he’d tried to block parts of it from his mind, truthfully – the captain had looked far too amused at the whole thing. 

“It looked believable,” d’Artagnan rasped. 

“Yeah,” Aramis added, signaling for the waitress. “I had no problem believing Athos didn’t have a clue what he was doing.”

“I’ll get you for this,” Athos said, leaning his elbows on the table and doing his best to stretch the muscles in his lower back without moving too many of the others. “When you least expect it.”

“Do you remember what happened the last time you tried to sneak up on him?” Porthos took the bar menu from the condiment caddy in the center of the table. “You told Treville you’d walked into a door.”

“I had. Just a with a little extra help.” A little extra help being that Aramis had rounded on him, punched him hard, and then proceeded to body slam him into the nearest solid object, which happened to be one of the fire doors in the Garrison records room. Athos had been too stunned at the precision and speed of the movements to do anything other than take the hits in silence. 

As Athos had readily admitted it hadn’t been his fault, Aramis, for once, didn’t feel guilty as sin about hurting his own teammate. 

“Hey, boys. The usual?” Their waitress, a slip of a girl with a temper twice her size, was as regular to them as they were to The Wren. 

“Please. And an order of nachos.” Porthos glanced at Athos and added, “Bag of ice for the old man, too, please.”

Snickering at the death glare Athos was sending Porthos’s way, he wondered aloud, “How many of those high schoolers do you think will actually follow through and head into law enforcement careers?”

d’Artagnan shrugged. “Dunno. I wanted to be a professional hockey player when I was little.”

“A chef,” Porthos said quietly. “That’s what I wanted to be.”

“A priest.”

The three of them turned to stare incredulously at Aramis, who shrugged, and added, “I found out I was better at sending souls to hell than saving them.”

Athos took the proffered bag of ice from their waitress and unceremoniously stuffed it up the back of his shirt and bit down on the temptation to tell Aramis he’d already saved a soul that hadn’t had a hope for redemption at one point. 

“An architect,” he said, remembering all the times he and Thomas had built veritable palaces out of Legos. 

Aramis picked up his newly dropped off beer. “A toast then. To what we wanted to be, and what we’ve instead become.” He raised his glass. “Team One. All for one.”

“And one for all,” they finished together, bottles clinking in affirmation.


	12. Show Stoppers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A twig snapped; Athos turned in time to take two rounds in the torso. Their impact into his Kevlar vest knocked the wind out of him, and he stumbled blindly backward. His heel caught on the remnants of a stump and before he could even catch his breath he careened ass over teacups down the incline and off the edge. There was a moment of weightlessness; he managed to suck in a lungful of air and then had it smacked out of him again the moment he hit the icy cold surface of the water._
> 
>  
> 
> Or: Four times they scared the hell out of each other, and one time Team One scared the shit out of everybody else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *ducks* Hi. 
> 
> I need about five more hours in my day. Seriously. There are so many fics that I want to write, and so many I'm working on, and when I get them done there will just be massive amounts of posts. But until then, have some whump. Everybody gets whumped. Everybody gets shot in the Kevlar vest. 
> 
> Hasn't been beta'd, so if you see any mistakes feel free to point them out. Ya'll are seriously the best readers, and questions, comments, prompts, and requests are always welcome (even if I don't know when I'll get to them). Sorry it's been so long, but I hope you enjoy whatever this turned out to be. (I apologize if it feels rushed in places)

**I**  
Athos had lived in Canada most of his life, and would have thought that would have been reason enough to be used to the winter. 

Not so much, apparently. 

The idea of being out in the fifteen-degree weather – wind chill not included – was enough to make him grumpy. Added to that a jaunt through the woods at Sainte Petronille after a fleeing suspect and, well, it was enough to make him downright pissy at the world. 

He came to an opening in the trees, a rather steep drop into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to his right, and slowed to a walk. Somewhere ahead of him was his suspect, and somewhere behind him and to the left was the rest of his team. 

“Gentlemen?” he said softly into his mic. 

Nothing. Not even static. Which meant if they had heard him they weren’t responding. Or weren’t able to respond. 

_”I think I see you, Athos,”_ Porthos’s voice sounded in his ear. _”Coming up on your right.”_

Athos stiffened, reaching for his weapon holstered at his side. “Porthos, there’s a body of water to my right.”

Movement off his eleven o’clock caught his attention, and he peered through the late afternoon gloom. The shape looked familiar.

 _”I think I’m almost to you,”_ Aramis said, sounding slightly out of breath. 

A twig snapped; Athos turned in time to take two rounds in the torso. Their impact into his Kevlar vest knocked the wind out of him, and he stumbled blindly backward. His heel caught on the remnants of a stump and before he could even catch his breath he careened ass over teacups down the incline and off the edge. There was a moment of weightlessness; he managed to suck in a lungful of air and then had it smacked out of him again the moment he hit the icy cold surface of the water. 

 

Aramis heard the shots and bolted toward them, jumping over anything that was in his path. 

_”I have the suspect, suspect is down.”_ d’Artagnan’s voice came through loud and clear. 

“Athos? Athos!”

He was close enough to hear Porthos’s calls in stereo, and he put on an extra burst of speed. He arrived roughly the same time d’Artagnan did, dragging their suspected drug dealer with him. 

“Where is he?” Aramis asked. 

The man shrugged as best he could with his hands cuffed behind his back and d’Artagnan holding him by the scruff of the neck. 

“He should be right here,” Porthos said, running a hand through his hair. 

“I shot him.” He was stupidly proud of himself.

There was a splash. Followed by another. Aramis cocked his head to the side; Porthos didn’t hesitate to start down the hill yelling Athos’s name. 

“Aramis! Aramis get down here!” Porthos slid the last few feet to the drop off on his knees. Athos, weighed down by his clothes and his vest, was making slow progress toward the slope. “Come on, Athos! Paddle faster!” He leaned forward, straining to get as close to Athos as he could. 

Aramis tumbled down the slope, grabbed Porthos by the belt at the back of his pants and dug his heels in as an anchor point. “Athos! Swim, Athos!”

Slowed considerably by the cold sapping at his strength, Athos finally bobbed within reach. Porthos wrapped a big hand around the strap at the back of Athos’s vest above the name patch, and yanked. He came partway out of the water with a flail; Aramis pulled back on Porthos, who in turn got a fistful of shirtsleeve in his other hand and dragged Athos back to dry land. He lay facedown in the dead leaves and dirt breathing harshly.

“Call and ambulance. Now.” Aramis rolled him onto his back and began attacking the Velcro straps of his vest. “Athos? Athos? I need you talk to me.”

“Wha’?” Athos looked blearily up at him, eyelids at half-mast. His lips were blue, and he wasn’t shivering. 

“Tell me what happened.” He ignored Porthos in the background talking with emergency services and tossed the Kevlar to the side in favor of working on the shirt buttons underneath. “Dirtbag said you got shot.”

It took him longer than usual, but Athos managed to hold up two shaking fingers. “Yeah. Vest.”

“You took them in the vest? Front or back?” A moment later Aramis had his answer as he pulled open Athos’s shirt to reveal a dark bruise forming in the dip under his sternum. Aramis wiggled him out of his shirt and gently palpitated the area. Nothing felt broken, but he’d feel a whole lot better once Athos had some x-rays taken. 

Athos made a noise of distress deep in his throat and tried to roll away from Aramis’s questioning fingers. Undeterred, Aramis pulled him back flat and asked, “What’s he wanted for, Athos? Why were we arresting him?”

“Um…” His eyes closed briefly until Aramis undid both button and zipper on his jeans. “’Mis?”

“Yup, just me. Gonna get you warmed up.” He glanced over his shoulder to find Porthos pulling off Athos’s shoes, and he eased Athos’s jeans and boxers off. Aramis, as quick as he could, shucked out of his own clothes until he was just in his underwear. 

Before he could think too much about it, Aramis stretched out next to Athos and pulled the slightly smaller man against him. It was like holding a human icicle, and Aramis tried to suppress his shivers. Porthos, phone cradled between his shoulder and his ear still, went about tucking Aramis’s layers around them both – more so Athos – and added his own coat and shirt to the mix. 

“Come on, Athos,” Aramis murmured, fingers twitching with the need to rub warmth back into the pale, cold limbs next to him. 

“’M cold…”

“I know.” He shared a look with Porthos. “I know.”

Neither of them had ever been so ridiculously happy to hear sirens in all their life. Athos twitched once against Aramis. Then twice. By the time the paramedics had threaded their way through the trees to their location he was shivering violently. Porthos, standing next to a tree with d’Artagnan, knew it would take a while to get the absolutely horrified look in Aramis’s eyes out of his own mind. d’Artagnan leaned against Porthos as though he’d been a balloon someone had let the air out of.

 **II**  
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust d’Artagnan. They had to trust each other or they would have been dead multiple times over by that point, but there was something about the risks the younger man took that sometimes left Athos’s gut clenching unexpectedly. 

It was like dealing with Aramis all over again, truthfully, and really, once was enough on that front. One reckless daredevil was about all he could handle.

Aramis’s less than wonderful impulses had been tempered by his partnership with Athos and Porthos, the hell on Earth that was SAVOY, and the number of years he’d been a SITRU sniper. He still took risks, of course, but he was more calculated about it. More orchestrated. 

But nothing really prepared one for the sight of one’s youngest teammate hitting the floor like a rock when a shot caught him high in the chest from a man hiding behind a packing crate. 

Years of working together had allowed Athos to filter out certain sounds – one of which was Betsy’s bark – and he waited until after he heard it to move from his crouched position by the door of the warehouse office. Aramis would have taken care of what had hit their youngest.

Athos peered around the corner and his breath caught in his throat. 

d’Artagnan hadn’t moved. 

It took less than two minutes with the arrival of QCPD to secure the scene, and before the last of the gun runners had been rounded up Athos was sprinting across the warehouse floor toward d’Artagnan. Porthos was right behind him, and he heard a clattering from above that suggested Aramis was doing his best to get to them. 

But it was moot point because d’Artagnan hadn’t _twitched_ and Athos wouldn’t – couldn’t – do this. 

He dropped to his knees on the hard concrete and gently rolled him over. Aramis appeared at his elbow, Betsy slung over one shoulder, though none of the three of them could make themselves reach out and see about finding a pulse. There was, however, surprisingly little blood for such a –

d’Artagnan’s eyes popped open as he sucked in a deep lungful of air.

Porthos fell back on his rear with a grunt, Athos dropped his chin to his chest and breathed, while Aramis tipped his head back, murmuring something feverishly in Spanish. 

Treville and the paramedics found them some ten minutes later still huddled closely around each other, Athos holding d’Artagnan’s Kevlar vest.

 

 _III_  
Aramis had seen his fair share of saved lives and lost ones through the scope on his rifle. This time, from his vantage point on a fire escape down the alley they were using as a meeting place to coax a drug dealer out of hiding, he couldn’t help but feel uneasy about it. 

Porthos stood with a briefcase in one hand and the other tucked in his coat pocket. He looked as though there weren’t anyplace else he’d rather be, though Aramis knew that wasn’t quite true. If they had had their way this bust would have happened at a much later time, and Aramis would still be curled around Porthos in their bed. 

He watched through his scope as the dealer arrived. Another person trailed along behind him, and the hair on the back of his neck prickled. There was only supposed to be the two of them, Porthos and the dealer. He shifted his attention away from Porthos to the newcomer, and then back again. 

“Athos…” he murmured. “We have – “

Between one heart beat and the next, as Porthos was handing over the briefcase, the man who wasn’t supposed to be there at all pulled a weapon from under his coat and shot Porthos three times center mass. Aramis’s mind went white-hot for a moment before he refocused his target, breathed out, and squeezed the trigger. With Athos coming from one end of the alley, and d’Artagnan from the other, the dealer didn’t have anywhere to go. The arrest was nice and easy, and d’Artagnan called in the backup units they had waiting a few streets over. 

Aramis never saw any of it. He was moving as soon as he’d shot the bastard that had taken out Porthos. 

The rest of the trip down the fire escape was a blur, and he pitched the rifle at the first able body he saw – d’Artagnan – in his hurry to get to Porthos. 

Athos appeared in front of him. “Aramis.”

“Fucking _move_ , Athos,” he snarled. “That’s – that’s my – “ He choked on the words and went to step by the other man. Athos caught him around the middle, arms cinched tight to his sides, and held on. 

“Aramis, wait – “

“Let me go, Athos.” He struggled; Athos kicked at the back of his leg, forcing Aramis to his knees. 

About five feet away from them, Porthos said up with a groan and rubbed at his chest. He looked at the pair of them, d’Artagnan hovering behind them with Betsy, and grinned. “Kevlar works really well, yeah?”

Aramis sagged and this time Athos’s restraining arms were the only things keeping him from kissing the pavement. 

 

 **IV**  
Porthos, once the signal was given by Athos, barreled through the back door of the rundown house. There were people everywhere, and music blasted, and he was grateful to have his shield slapping at his chest as it hung from a chain around his neck. Aramis, working undercover, was already in the house somewhere, as was the woman they wanted for international espionage. 

The base thumped louder the closer he got to the living room. He detoured through a short hallway and into the kitchen. He was to go up the back stairs and meet them outside the room Aramis had secluded her in. Athos and d’Artagnan would come up the front way, and QCPD was waiting for the underage drinkers on the front lawn. 

He crept down the hallway, sticking close to the wall. The music cut off, and he froze momentarily. 

Two gunshots followed by a series of thumps echoed loud and clear before the screaming started from downstairs. 

Porthos rounded a corner and found Athos with their suspect shoved against the wall as he put handcuffs on her. A handgun lay on the floor. 

“Guy she shot fell down the stairs,” he said, jerking his head further down the hall. 

“I’ll check him. Where’s Aramis?”

“Hasn’t checked in yet. Neither has d’Artagnan.”

He met d’Artagnan at the top of the stairs and they started toward the landing together. Halfway down Porthos recognized the unruly hair and a flannel shirt that normally resided in his half of the closet. 

“Jesus, no,” he muttered, and took the remaining steps two at a time to get to Aramis’s awkwardly sprawled body on the hardwood. There was a bruise already forming along the side of his face, and his left arm was bent at an unnatural angle. “d’Artagnan, call an ambulance! Now!” 

Moving carefully so he didn’t jostle Aramis at all in case he had a head or spine injury, Porthos pressed his fingers to Aramis’s neck. A steady pulse thrummed under his touch, and he breathed a sigh of relief. 

“She shot him,” he said, gesturing to Aramis’s torso. “But there’s no blood.”

“You think - ?” d’Artagnan undid the top few buttons on Aramis’s shirt. Underneath was the familiar sight of his Kevlar vest. “Son of a bitch wore a vest.”

Porthos let his chuckle roll through him like water. 

“’Thos?”

The pair of them looked down to find Aramis blinking sleepily. 

“Easy, ‘Mis. Don’t move.” He watched Aramis close his eyes briefly before opening them again. “I mean it, don’t move.”

“She shot me,” he said softly. 

“And then you dove down the stairs,” d’Artagnan added helpfully. 

“Is that why I hurt?” Aramis’s words ran together, and he struggled to stay conscious. 

“Yeah, you’re going to be pretty black and blue.” Porthos turned to d’Artagnan and looked meaningfully up the stairs. “Go get Athos, will you?” As soon as d’Artagnan had left, he leaned down so Aramis could see him better. “Aramis?”

Wide, scared brown eyes with different sized pupils focused on him as best they could. 

“Can you feel your arms and legs?” He reached out and carefully squeezed the fingers on the end of Aramis’s unbroken arm. “Can you feel that?”

“Yes.”

Porthos smiled gently. “Alright. You hang in here, right here with me, okay?”

“’Kay.”

When Athos and d’Artagnan joined them a few minutes later, Porthos still hadn’t let go of Aramis’s hand. 

 

 **V**  
“Do we have all teams accounted for?” Treville had to shout to be heard over the noise and the chaos. Most of the waterfront storage district was in total disarray, Musketeers and Mounties were everywhere mixed in with QC uniformed officers, and he was trying to a headcount before the structural stability of the maze-like building totally collapsed. 

“Team One is still inside, sir,” Etienne said. The man was covered head to toe in soot from one of the many fires still smoldering. 

Treville scrubbed his hands over his face. The four men who made up Team One weren’t going to leave until their job was finished. 

Antoine, a probationary Musketeer assigned to Team Eight ran up to him and breathlessly reported, “The witness in his protective custody again. Team One still hasn’t checked in yet, sir.”

“Thank you.”

Etienne shifted his weight from foot to foot. There was a low rumbling sound; several cries of “Get back!” and “She’s comin’ down!” echoed through the space, and there was yet more confusion as personnel ran from the building as it heaved and groaned. Finally, in a shower of dust and grit, what remained of the structure collapsed inward. 

An eerie silence reigned in the aftermath, and Treville caught himself looking for any sign of movement from the building. He knew Etienne was doing the same, as though the two of them could barely think of the reality. There wasn’t a way for anyone to survive that. The first explosion had taken out most of the buiding supports and they had been living on borrowed time. 

“They got her out, sir,” Etienne said quietly, one hand pressed to his earpiece to hear better. “Team One got her out.”

“Have they checked in yet?” 

Those boys had defied the odds before, but maybe…maybe this time they hadn’t been quite so lucky. 

“No, sir.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Should – should I have Constance start notifying next of kin?”

Treville was about to answer when Antoine’s startled, “What the hell is _that_?” drew his attention. 

Emerging from the haze was a large, lopsided creature moving rather awkwardly. The closer it got, the more both Treville and Etienne could see it wasn’t one single being, but rather four men, arms hooked over shoulders. One of the ones in the middle seemed to be limping badly.

“Holy fuck,” Etienne breathed. “Those bastards made it.”

Treville leaned heavily against the side of the SUV he stood next to, and as Team One made their way slowly toward him, he couldn’t have said it better himself. Nor would he have believed it if he hadn’t seen it. 

d’Artagnan sported a broken nose and two black eyes; Porthos had blood running down the side of his neck; Athos wasn’t putting any weight on his right leg, and Aramis seemed to be covered uncomfortably in blood, to which he explained, “Most of it’s not mine.”

Someone snorted. Etienne disguised a laugh as a cough. Treville rubbed his eyes tiredly with a sigh. Some things never changed. 

“Get your reports to me on Monday, and, before you all fall down, go get some medical attention.”

He blatently ignored the mutterings that ranged from “It’s just a scratch” to “It’s not broken, I swear” to “Seriously, most of this _isn’t_ mine” and sighed again. No, some things never changed, and he hoped they never would.


	13. Planes, Trains, and (Improvised) Automobiles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A sleek, black Kawasaki motorcycle rolled up in front of them, a helmet still hanging from the handle bar. The bike came to a stop, and the man already on it pushed up the visor on his own helmet. Porthos grinned out from the well-padded interior._
> 
> _Aramis tightened the straps on his backpack until they were almost painfully tight against his shoulders._
> 
> _“You drive a motorcycle?” d’Artagnan asked when he found his voice._
> 
> _“Crotch rocket,” Aramis corrected tersely, taking the helmet Porthos offered him._
> 
>  
> 
> In which the boys must sometimes seek alternative means of transportation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. I've not fallen off the face of the Earth, I swear. I just work ridiculous hours because this is the busy season. There are more fics coming. I promise. I just...don't honestly know when I'll post them. The good news, however, is that I am indeed working on the Savoy fic. 
> 
> As for this thing that started off in one direction and went in a totally different one, and then it just...well, almost 9,000 words later this thing definitely got away from me. It's humorous, it's angsty. I adore you all. Seriously. You've no idea. I go back and read the lovely comment ya'll have left me when I'm feeling like i can't write a damn thing, and they never fail to make me smile and remember one of the reasons why I write. And I can't thank you all enough for sticking with me even though I go literal months without updating. I really appreciate it. 
> 
> I think that's all the rambling I need to do. 
> 
> **WARNING: mentions of a way to self-harm (cutting) [though nobody actually self-harms], the usual violence, and a rather graphic description of a major car accident.** (Any other warnings anyone thinks I need and I've forgotten just let me know. Also, on the subject of Roger the Horse, I honest to God just couldn't help myself...

**Aramis & Porthos**  
“I thought you said your car was in the shop?” d’Artagnan asked.

“It is.” Aramis tucked his shirt tails into his jeans and did his best to smooth down his unruly hair. Not that it mattered, in the long run.

Athos, keys in hand, appeared on Aramis’s other side. “Are you prepared for this?”

“Nope.”

“Prepared for what?” d’Artagnan’s next question was drowned out by a loud rumble.

A sleek, black Kawasaki motorcycle rolled up in front of them, a helmet still hanging from the handle bar. The bike came to a stop, and the man already on it pushed up the visor on his own helmet. Porthos grinned out from the well-padded interior. 

Aramis tightened the straps on his backpack until they were almost painfully tight against his shoulders.

“You drive a motorcycle?” d’Artagnan asked when he found his voice.

“Crotch rocket,” Aramis corrected tersely, taking the helmet Porthos offered him. 

Athos stifled a snort.

“Since I graduated high school,” Porthos said proudly. He kept the bike steady as Aramis settled on the tiny seat behind him and up over the rear wheel, his feet braced on the pegs. d’Artagnan saw him glance skyward for a moment before making the sign of the Cross and snapping his visor down into place. Aramis cinched his arms around Porthos’s midsection.

“Ready, love?” Porthos shouted. The answer he received was a muffled stream of Spanish.

Tipping an imaginary hat to Athos and d’Artagnan, Porthos revved the engine, slid his visor down, and away they went, Aramis clinging to his back like a monkey. 

Athos started for his SUV. “How long is Aramis’s car out of commission?”

“At least a week.” His laugh joined Athos’s chuckle.

And somewhere in Quebec City, Aramis was silently cursing his car to hell and back in at least three languages.

 

 **Porthos & d’Artagnan**  
The pair of them crept along among old, rusted farm equipment and did their best to stay out of easy sight on their way to the barn. An armed guard came around the corner of the large, red building; Porthos flattened himself against an abandoned wheel frame while d’Artagnan threw himself forward onto his belly, the knee-high grass doing enough to hide him.

“We need to get in there,” Porthos hissed. 

“I’m thinking.”

“Think faster.” He looked around and, in the middle of a half-plowed field some eighty yards to his left, was a near brand-new massive six-wheel tractor. “I got an idea.”

With the sun sinking lower and lower over the horizon, and Etienne, the leader for Team Two stuck inside the barn with an American senator’s daughter after a drug bust gone bad, it felt more like a race against time than anything else. The Senator was hell-bent on sending the cash ransom, and the rest of Team Two – the one member who wasn’t still in the hospital – and Captain Treville were having a hell of a time explaining to him that giving them money was a Very Bad Idea. 

Hence, it was up to Porthos and d’Artagnan to get them out. 

d’Artagnan was rather impressed at the speed and silence with which a man of Porthos’s size moved. Using the growing twilight as cover, he followed Porthos across the field to the tractor, where they hid behind it as the guard continued to circle the barn.

The tires loomed over the pair of them. Porthos tapped it appreciatively with his knuckles and asked, “Does this thing have a roll cage?”

“Does it – what?” d’Artagnan remembered at the last moment to keep his voice down. 

“Roll cage. Does it have one?” He stepped away from the tire and did his best to inspect the cab frame from the ground. It looked solid enough. 

“It’s a tractor. It doesn’t have a roll cage.” Not that d’Artagnan could think of _why_ a tractor would need a roll cage. 

Regardless, Porthos pulled himself up the little ladder and as quietly and unobtrusively into the cab as possible, and shimmied into the foot well. 

“But it’s sturdy, right?” Porthos angled himself every which way in order to get to the wires he needed. 

“Of course. It’s a Deere,” d’Artagnan said, ducking down when he spotted the guard making yet another round. He was sure the man couldn’t see him all the way up there, but he didn’t want to take a chance. “What – what are you – “

“You know your way around one of these things, right?” He stared up at d’Artagnan’s slack features from the floor, two wires held separately between his fingers. 

D’Artagnan didn’t know whether to be proud or indignant, and settled for what he hoped was Athos’s own _you are a moron but I tolerate you partly because I like you and partly because I am paid to do so_ expression. 

“Right.” Porthos gave himself a little shake, pressed the wires together, and the tractor came alive with a roar. “We might wanna do this kinda quick.”

“This is insane!” Still, the younger man nudged Porthos out of the way, put the tractor in gear, and aimed for the broadside of the barn. 

“No,” he said, “this is normal. Athos at sensitivity training is insane.” He shimmied into the seat and shared it with d’Artagnan as best he could. 

“I thought that was ironic?”

“I pity his instructor,” Porthos said dryly. “You’re aiming for the broadside, right?”

d’Artagnan, without taking his eyes off the barn in front of him, reached over and punched his teammate hard on the arm. 

 

Etienne knew Team One’s involvement in even the simplest of tasks meant things had the potential to get hairy. Never, in his wildest dreams, would he have imagined Porthos and d’Artagnan to have crashed a John Deere tractor through the broadside of a barn and call it a rescue mission. Never would he have imagined it would _work_ , either. 

Porthos hopped down from the cab and grinned widely. The majority of the wreckage they’d caused had landed on the unfortunate souls who thought it a good idea to kidnap both a senator’s daughter and a Musketeer. 

“Athos finally had to go to sensitivity training, didn’t he?” Etienne asked while d’Artagnan rounded up the last of the shell-shocked dealers. 

“Yeah. Aramis is with Team Three because they’re bringing their UC out of deep cover and doing a bust, and their own sniper is out with a stomach bug.” Porthos hooked his hands over the neck of his vest with a shrug. 

“I wondered why you two were wandering around without adult supervision,” he said dryly. 

“Just thinkin’ outside the box, that’s all.”

Etienne snorted. If that was what he called “thinking outside the box” then no wonder Treville looked like he needed either a stiff drink or a higher dose of blood pressure medication on an almost regular basis. 

 

 **Aramis & Athos**  
Treville was going to kill him. And then, when the captain was done, Athos would eviscerate the rest of him. With good reason, too.

Aramis wasn’t even supposed to be riding along. He was, medically speaking, cleared only for desk duty. But Athos had been driving him to his doctor’s appointment, the pair of them brainstorming and going over what clues they had for a case and how their latest batch of drug smugglers were, in fact, smuggling drugs, when Aramis put two and two together. Or, rather, drugs, grave robbers, and a funeral home whose financials didn’t quite add up.

He’d stayed out of sight, as per Athos’s request, unsteady on his feet even two weeks with his walking cast under his belt. As Athos was doing the bulk of poking around, Aramis was damn near on the other side of the casket showroom when one of Caerson’s men came in with a limp Athos draped over one broad shoulder. 

Aramis hunkered behind a $5,000 casket – and, seriously, who needed one that expensive – and watched them pack both the drugs and Athos into another coffin.

Oh, _fuck_.

Outnumbered, with a bum leg and no gun, he could only watch as they loaded the casket into the back of the hearse. He inched forward, and did his best to memorize what he could see of the license plate.

The hearse peeled out of the parking lot, and Aramis dug both his badge and his phone from his pocket as he limped after them.

Porthos picked up on the second ring with a pleasant, _“Yeah?”_

“They have Athos!” he blurted, hustling down the sidewalk as fast as he could go.

_”Who has Athos?”_

“Caerson! In a hearse!”

Aramis let loose a string of Spanish that would have made a sailor blush, and switched to English again to say, “Put a BOLO out on an Ashwood Funeral Home hearse.” He rattled off the license plate numbers he knew, assured Porthos he would continue to tail the damn thing, and hung up.

Tail a hearse. On foot. With a walking cast.

He held up his badge, took a deep breath, and stepped off the curb. A sports car swerved to avoid him, horn blaring, but the moped behind it screeched to a stop.

“Are you frickin’ nuts, buddy?” the driver yelled.

“Officer d’Herblay, Special Investigations and Tactical Response Unit,” he said. “I need to borrow your moped.”

 

Porthos had always thought the SITR Unit was a bit on the bonkers side of things. They were certainly unorthodox at times, and some of the more interesting cases sometimes seemed stranger than fiction. But he trusted Treville, and he trusted his teammates. 

So when he called Aramis after they had found the hearse and arrested Caerson and his men, and told him to make sure the casket was somewhere out in the open, he and d’Artagnan shrugged before heaving it onto a city-owned patch of grass. It was a little strange, sure, because the dead guy in the casket – it was in a hearse, the dude had to be dead – wasn’t going anywhere, and probably wasn’t going to appreciate being put under a tree. 

“Aramis say when he would be here?” d’Artagnan asked as they leaned against the front bumper of their vehicle. 

“Nope.” Porthos crossed his arms over his chest.

There was a commotion behind them; Porthos turned in time to watch a moped careen between two patrol cars, officers scattering like birds. It skidded to a stop, and the driver dismounted sloppily, hopping slightly as his walking cast caught on the seat.

“Aramis?” Porthos asked as d’Artagnan said, “Where did you get that?”

He ignored them both and went to the back of the empty hearse.”Where’s the casket?”

“On the grass – where’s Athos?” d’Artagnan fell in line with Porthos as they followed Aramis up onto the sidewalk and toward the coffin. 

“In the casket,” Aramis said. “They put him in the casket.”

d’Artagnan’s expression didn’t change, and the color drained from Porthos’s face. Aramis crouched as best he could and opened the lid.

Athos lay there, eyes wide open, and so still that for one terrifying moment Aramis thought he was dead.

“Athos? Athos, it’s Aramis.” He reached in and rubbed his knuckles along Athos’s sternum. “Come on, Athos.”

He shuddered; his chest twitched, and he screamed hoarsely. Aramis, taken off-guard, fell back on his rear, and then had a lapful of panicked man as Athos clawed his way out of the casket. He wrapped both arms around Athos’s heaving chest and held him tightly against his body.

“Easy, Athos. Easy. Breathe. You can breathe.” Aramis took exaggerated breaths hoping Athos would match him. He did, finally, and Aramis no longer worried he’d pass out from oxygen deprivation.

Athos shook violently from head to toe in Aramis’s grip, and, almost immediately after he’d calmed slightly, leaned over and vomited in the grass. Aramis flinched at the pressure on his bad leg, and felt his grip slip.

Porthos was there, easing Athos up and away from the mess and settling him on his rear, legs splayed out in front of him like a marionette with cut strings.

 _”Look up, Athos,”_ Porthos murmured in French. Athos reverted primarily to his mother tongue under duress. _”Look up and see the sky. Look up and breathe it in.”_

He did as he was told, breathing raggedly, and leaned his head back against Porthos’s thigh. 

d’Artagnan helped Aramis to his feet and as another vehicle drove up. Treville exited the SUV, took a moment to assess the scene, and made a beeline for Aramis. 

Aramis glanced at his watch and idly noted he was an hour late for his doctor’s appointment. An appointment Treville had made for him, and expressly told Athos to _make him keep_.

“I can explain,” he started.

“I should damn well hope so,” Treville barked. “Let’s start with ‘In the name of Commissioner Louis and for the greater good of Canada, hand over that moped,” shall we?”

 

 **d’Artagnan and Athos**  
“This is ridiculous,” d’Artagnan muttered as he followed the dark outline in front of him that was Athos.

“Maybe if someone hadn’t gotten lost we wouldn’t be in this mess, now would we?” Athos stepped over a log and immediately into a water-filled hole. “Fuck.”

Which was putting it mildly.

d’Artagnan stopped, and peered out across the gently lapping waters. “We’re on the wrong side of the river.”

Athos spun on his heel with a hissed, “What?”

“I think that’s Aramis and Porthos over there,” he said, pointing toward the other side and two lights periodically bobbing through the darkness and the trees. 

“And just how to propose we get over there?” Athos turned around again, and continued on. He stumbled when he went from wet mud and branches to stones, and then felt the world go out from under him as he rammed his shins into something solid and fell forward. 

“Athos? Athos!”

“I’m fine.” He pushed himself up and peered through the darkness at what he’d stumbled over. He blinked because, really, there was no way there was a paddleboat in front of him. A very old, rather moldy in places, paddleboat. 

He wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

 

“Are you sure this thing is sea worthy?” d’Artagnan asked as they stood calf-deep in the cold water. 

“It’s a river, not the ocean. And unless you have any other bright ideas…?”

He climbed in and put his feet on the pedals. The small boat rocked dangerously as Athos got settled, and after a few false starts, they managed to not only get the pedals to turn but gain forward momentum. 

They were about halfway across the river to where Aramis and Porthos were no doubt standing on the shoreline, their lights fixed places in a sea of darkness, when Athos felt cold wetness on the back of his thighs and realized they were sinking.

He cupped his hands and began bailing water out of his side of the paddleboat.

“What are you _doing_ over there?” d’Artagnan asked as they rocked dangerously from the extra movement.

“We’re sinking, so unless you’d like to swim the rest of the way to shore I suggest you start bailing.”

d’Artagnan’s response was to paddle faster, and for a moment, until Athos could match his pace, they slewed in a circle to start heading back the way they’d come. Athos doubled his efforts, and the combined action and reaction caused them to zig-zag the rest of the way across the river. 

“Two if by sea,” Aramis said with badly-disguised glee as Athos and d’Artagnan paddled as far onto shore as they could before abandoning ship. “At least we got that part right.”

“Wrong country.” d’Artagnan used both hands to wring water out of his shirt tails. “And it’s not like the British are coming, anyway.”

“Wasn’t aware the Musketeers had a naval division,” Porthos muttered as they followed their soggy team leader up the path. 

“Never got the funding,” Aramis and Athos answered at the same time in the same dry tone of voice, and Porthos’s answering bark of laughter echoed through the trees.

 

 **Aramis, d’Artagnan & Athos**  
d’Artagnan had to stop himself from checking his phone every five minutes to see how much closer they were to the province border. If it was going to be another hour, then he was going to have to switch with Athos otherwise their suspect wasn’t going to be arrested as d’Artagnan was going to kill him just to stop his blasted humming. 

Speaking of Athos – d’Artagnan looked across the bus aisle in time to watch Athos tuck a dark blue and green wool blanket more closely around Aramis’s chest and shoulders. A traveling blanket, Porthos had called it when he and Aramis turned up at the bus station for their trip to Campbellton to ensure a low-level arms dealer was, indeed, on his way back to Quebec City. Something to keep him warm and remind him of home, to keep him grounded.

It was the only blanket he _hadn’t_ taken on the training exercise in the woods. 

Athos turned in his seat and caught d’Artagnan’s eye, the corners of his mouth twitching upward. 

They passed a sign welcoming them to Quebec Province and d’Artagnan briefly looked at the ceiling in thanks. He shifted around, dug his credentials and handcuffs out of his back packet, and finally got to do what he’d wanted to do since they’d left Campbellton. 

“Sir?” He tapped Hugo, the low-level arms dealer sitting next to him, on the shoulder. “Sir?”

Hugo pulled his headphones from his ears. “Yes?”

“Officer d’Artagnan, Special Investigations and Tactical Response Unit. You’re under arrest.” He held up both his badge and his handcuffs. “No problems, yeah?”

The arms dealer looked past him, caught side of Athos’s steely expression from across the aisle, and blinked a few times before offering his wrists. 

Once the relative commotion had settled, d’Artagnan relaxed against his seat only to tense again at the feel of fingertips on his knee. He opened an eye to see Athos with his hand out, Aramis’s iPod and headphones in his palm. 

He took them gratefully, and leaned forward again to peer around Athos. Aramis, instead of being slumped against the window like he had been, was using Athos’s shoulder as a pillow, his hood pulled up and around his face to keep it mostly from view. 

d’Artagnan turned the little device on, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth, and settled once again. At least now he didn’t have to listen to that damn humming all the way to Quebec City. 

 

 **Porthos, d’Artagnan, Spike & Lew**  
It’ll be fun, they said. It’ll improve inter-departmental relations, they said. Toronto is a nice city, they said. 

Nobody said anything about the criminals being so damn _fast_.

The woman they were after, who had kidnapped her own children with intent to smuggle them out of the country, had once been a university track star. She’d very nearly made the Olympic team, and she was giving the four of them just about all they could handle. 

d’Artagnan was in the lead, followed closely by Lew and Spike – and Porthos had thought Aramis and Athos’s real first names were odd, though someone had mentioned Spike was only a nickname – with Porthos bringing up the rear. They barreled down a set of stairs and into the building at the heart of the Yonge-Dundas Square. 

He dodged around a group of people, and saw one of their own go ass over teacups. Porthos changed course and, on his way by, used the strap on the back of the vest over the name Young to drag him back to his feet. 

They made it further into the subway station, and Porthos watched as deRuth hurdled a turn style with ease. d’Artagnan followed suit without breaking stride, and though Spike hesitated slightly on approached, he made it over just fine. Porthos vaulted over using one hand on the solid metal, and heard a thump behind him as Lew did the same and landed heavily.

It was an almost frantic scramble for the four of them to get on the train as deRuth did, and once inside the car Porthos used his best attention-getting whistle to quiet the rush of people. 

“Make a path!”

Commuters obliged as best they could, and together he and Lew moved single-file toward the door at the end. The train lurched forward; Porthos wobbled, and grabbed onto the bar running near the ceiling for balance. 

The voices in his ear – Athos and the SRU sergeant Parker – went unnervingly quiet as they entered the subway tunnel proper. 

Moving from car to car was a special kind of hell, and Porthos couldn’t help but think that if he didn’t do it quickly there was the chance he’d be bucked off completely to splat against the fast-moving walls he couldn’t see. That thought, and the idea that if he did Aramis wouldn’t let him live it down, was enough to propel him forward across the gap between the doors as quick as possible. 

The subway train careened around a corner before coming to an almost screeching halt. 

“They’ve told the TTC which train she was on,” Lew said as they cleared yet another car of oddly silent passengers. 

“Wonderful.” 

Just as he was getting used to moving along something that wasn’t also moving, the train lurched forward again. It pulled smoothly into an empty station. Well, empty except for Sam, Ed, and Aramis, who had Betsy casually slung over his shoulder as they stood on the platform. 

Porthos staggered from the train back to solid ground, and thought about falling to his knees to kiss it. Aramis offered him a cheeky grin as d’Artagnan and Spike came from the opposite end, deRuth handcuffed and between them. 

“I am so glad we don’t have those in QC,” he said, hooking his hands in the top of his vest and pulling it away from his neck. 

“Yeah,” Aramis agreed as they started through the station to the street. “They’d become the newest lair for criminals because we’d never get Athos down there.”

_”I can hear you, gentlemen.”_

“We know,” they said together, ignoring the look Ed was throwing their way. 

They reached the street and Porthos felt like he could finally breathe properly again. He wasn’t claustrophobic like Athos, but there had been something about the movement of the train and feeling like he was going to be bucked off between cars that had set him on edge.

“Hey, Porthos? What do you say we take a streetcar back?” Aramis asked, pointing down the street.

He turned in time to watch the jointed TTC streetcar swing its way around the corner, and paled visibly. 

 

 **Aramis & Athos**  
“You have absolutely no sense of direction, do you?” Aramis asked as they burst through the last remaining bits of underbrush and nearly into a split-rail fence. 

“I do okay,” Athos protested. 

“You do alright in the _city_ ,” he said. “Where there are _signs_. Out here?” He waved his good arm rather frantically. “Out here you kind of suck, okay. You suck, Athos.”

Athos shrugged. “I was born in Paris. What do you expect? And quit flailing so I check your bandage.”

Aramis immediately stopped moving so Athos could pull aside the upper part of his shirt. The stab wounds – one to the top of Aramis’s left shoulder and the other just above his clavicle bone – didn’t seem to be bleeding heavily anymore. He’d patched them as best he could with strips from his undershirt. The rest of said undershirt had then gone to wrapping up the various knife cuts to Aramis’s upper and lower arm. Athos was well aware that were one just a little lower it would have been the equivalent of slitting Aramis’s wrist. 

He was in for a frightening number of stitches when Athos could finally get him to a hospital. Possibly a transfusion, too.

Satisfied Aramis wasn’t losing any more blood than he already had for the moment, Athos helped him up over the fence and into what was a farmer’s pasture. On the far side, a good half mile away, was the barn. They aimed for that, and moved as quickly as they could. The hair on the back of Athos’s neck stood up the entire way there, a byproduct of being so exposed, and he’d never been more glad to reach the interior of the barn even if it was hot, stuffy, and smelled of hay and shit.

Aramis leaned heavily against the wall of a stall, and rapidly backed away when something warm and soft nudged the side of his head. 

“Easy,” Athos said, putting himself between his teammate and the curious horse eyeing them both. “Just a horse.” He let it smell his fingers before stroking its nose softly. “Hi.”

“You’ve handled horses?” Aramis asked, glancing at the name plaque above the door. It read Roger, and he inched further toward Athos after he was sure it wasn’t going to try and take his head off. Or his fingers.

“Had riding lessons starting when I was about six or seven.” He glanced up to note the horse’s name. “Roger. Good boy. Aramis?” With one hand scratching between Roger’s upright ears, he held his other out to Aramis. “Trust me?”

“Of course.” Aramis didn’t hesitate. He put his good hand in Athos’s and allowed the other man to lead him slowly back to their new friend. 

“Let him smell you first, then just pet his nose. He can tell if you’re nervous, so relax. He won’t hurt you.” He waited until Aramis had followed his instructions, then left the pair of them to it. There had to be a tack room around there somewhere. 

The barn was the only building around, which meant that, though it was probably used frequently, it was fairly isolated. Whoever owned Roger would have to drive out to see him and take care of him, though from the look of things whoever it was hadn’t been by in a while. 

Athos found the tack room. He had to make multiple trips to get what he needed out near the stall, and he checked each time to make sure Aramis and Roger were still getting along. On one such trip he paused, wishing he had his phone so he could snap a photo of Aramis nearly forehead to forehead with the horse, talking to him softly. His lower body leaned heavily on the stall door, and the faint tremble in his legs had Athos picking up the pace. Aramis’s endurance was almost legendary – he’d carried Porthos on his back for nearly two miles through the woods while being chased by the makers and owners of a homemade meth lab – but even he had his limits. 

With bridle in his hand, Athos approached the pair of them slowly. Roger’s ears perked when he saw what was Athos held, and he pawed at the ground on his side of the stall door. 

“Shall we go for a ride? Yes?” 

Aramis moved enough for Athos to slip the bridle over Roger’s head. He even opened the stall door, and watched as the big, black animal strode out, tail flicking happily. 

An overturned crate made the perfect seat as he watched Athos get Roger ready to ride. The speed and skill with which he did so was almost dizzying, as though Athos had been doing it most of his life and hadn’t ever stopped. When he was done, he found another crate and overturned it to create a step stool, and looked expectantly at Aramis.

“No.”

“Aramis,” Athos said slowly. “Trust me?”

“Yes.” Again, there was no hesitation. Aramis trusted Athos with his life, and then some. It was the horse he wasn’t sure of.

“We won’t let anything happen to you, okay?” Carefully, and slowly, Athos pulled Aramis to his feet and led him over to Roger. “Use the crate. Put your foot in the stirrup, pull yourself up, and I’ll give you a push from behind.”

Push from behind really meant a two-handed shove on his ass, and before Aramis could stop to think about what he’d just done, he was in the saddle and the world looked _a lot_ different from his current point of view. Roger shifted beneath him, and he clutched the side of the horse with his legs.

“Move forward.”

He scooted more toward the pommel and clutched it when Athos swung up easily behind him. Feet nudged his own out of the stirrups, and arms wrapped around him to hold the reins. It was an odd sensation; Aramis felt totally safe with Athos behind him, and yet felt like he was going to fall off the side. 

“Relax,” Athos murmured in his ear. “Lean back and relax.” He deftly turned them around and made for the door they’d left open in their haste to get under cover. 

Left arm lying almost uselessly in his lap, Aramis did his best to do just that as they started around the barn and down the driveway into another thicket of trees. He could feel the steady rise and fall of Athos’s chest against his back, and with the sun on his face and the slight breeze, he let the rocking motion of Roger’s gait lull him into a stupor.

Athos spurred Roger into a canter at the end of the driveway, the reins in one hand and the other wrapped around Aramis’s midsection. His fingers encountered something tacky, and he tried to remember if he’d seen Aramis’s bare torso. He hadn’t. He hadn’t made him take his shirt off all the way.

“Aramis?” he murmured. “How many times did he stab you?”

Aramis’s head lolled back on Athos’s shoulder. He was quiet for a moment, before he said, “Three. Or four. I think.”

 _Shit_.

He knew about half of them, then, and the other half he’d somehow missed in their haste to get out of the house in the woods. He’d kick himself if he could. 

“’M sorry I didn’t tell you,” Aramis slurred against his neck. “You always – you always wanna know ‘bout my hurts.”

“Hush,” Athos said quietly. “It’s not your fault and you have nothing to apologize for.” He rested his cheek against Aramis’s unruly curls. “I’m not mad.” Not entirely true, but he wasn’t mad with Aramis. If anything he was pissed at himself for missing something so fundamental as two additional stab wounds to his friend’s body. 

He tightened his grip on Aramis, and tried not to think about what would happen if he failed another brother.

 

Treville had tried to prepare himself for what he might find at the gas station during the drive from Quebec City. Two of his officers had gone missing only to reappear some hours later at a gas station, bruised and bloodied. Aramis had already been whisked away to a hospital in an ambulance, sirens blaring. Treville knew he’d had to have been unconscious at that point, as there was no way he’d have gone willingly without Athos with him. 

As for Athos…well, Trevile didn’t expect the sight that greeted him when he got out of his vehicle. Athos sat on a picnic table, elbows resting on his thighs with his handcuffed wrists dangling loosely between his knees. His normally immaculate shirt was splotchy with blood, but the most irregular – and improbable thing – was the horse standing behind him, head hooked casually over Athos’s left shoulder as though they did it every day.

“Porthos and d’Artagnan are on their way to the hospital,” Treville said, preemptively answering the question Athos was sure to ask. He saw something ease in the line of his shoulders, and motioned to the animal eyeing him rather flatly. “Who’s this?”

“His name is Roger.” He reached up with both hands and rubbed Roger’s nose. “We found him in a barn about eight miles up the road.”

“Ah. I see.” The captain approached slowly and held his hand out, allowing Roger to smell him first before scratching him between the ears. “And he’s why you’ve been arrested for property theft?”

“Possibly,” Athos hedged. “Though do you think he’d go anywhere he didn’t want to?”

Treville took a closer look at one of Roger’s large, dark eyes, and thought, _No. No he doesn’t. Much like the man._ He had to stifle a snort at that one. 

“He seems rather fond of you,” Treville remarked casually. 

Roger snuffled Athos’s hair, as though in agreement. 

“I think I’m the first person he’s seen in days,” he said dryly. “I don’t think he’s been out of the barn in a while.”

The captain’s expression hardened. “Is that so?”

Athos and Roger startled when Treville turned on the nearest beat cop and barked, “Officer!”

“Sir?”

“I’ll take full responsibility for this man. Release him into my custody.”

The officer paled slightly, and inched forward. Roger’s head swung around with a snort, and he lifted his lips back to reveal his teeth. 

“And – and the horse, too, sir? You’ll take the horse?” 

Treville, rather enjoying the spectacle of the officer trying to get close enough to get the handcuffs off Athos but without getting caught between Roger’s teeth, seemed to finally comprehend the question. Oh, well, if the horse had to come with them, too…

“Yes, Roger, too.”

The officer unlocked the handcuffs and snatched them back at the same time Roger darted forward, his teeth closing on the air where the man’s sleeve had previously been. He stumbled back, tripped over his own feet, and tumbled into the grass with a yelp.

Roger nickered, Athos raised an eyebrow, and Treville sent a long-suffering sigh toward the sky. 

 

Athos and Treville entered AE with slightly less restraint than if they were the ones injured. Porthos stood from where he’d been sitting trying to read an ages old magazine.

“How is he?” Athos asked

“Cold and tired,” he said. “He’s right on the edge of having lost enough blood for a transfusion, and they’d rather not tax his system like that if he can remake it himself over the next few days.”

“You’ve been in to see him?”

“Briefly.” Porthos sat again. “Between when they took the x-rays to see if the knife had punctured anything vital and when they were going to start stitching him up they let me sit with him.” He took a good look at Athos as he sat down, and asked, “Are those handcuffs?”

“Yep.” Athos glanced at his captain. “Is this really necessary?”

“You technically haven’t been cleared of any charges yet,” Treville pointed out. 

d’Artagnan turned wide eyes on his mentor and team leader. “You got _arrested_?”

“For what?” Porthos asked.

“Property theft,” he said stiffly. “Aramis required medical attention and I commandeered a mode of transportation for us.”

Snickering, Porthos leaned back. “Must have been a hell of a car.”

“It was a horse,” Treville said flatly. “A thoroughbred stallion.”

“His name’s Roger,” Athos added helpfully as both Porthos and d’Artagnan turned to stare incredulously at him. 

Their corner of the waiting room dissolved into fits of muffled laughter, and even Athos couldn’t keep the corners of his own mouth from twitching. 

 

 **Porthos & d’Artagnan**  
d’Artagnan threw his weight against the door again with the same effect as the previous eight tries – nothing. It didn’t budge. 

“Will you stop that?” Porthos asked, still searching every conceivable nook and cranny for something to either get the damn door open or break one of the windows. So far he hadn’t found anything of use, except an old tandem bicycle. 

“He’s going to take his time getting back to the city proper, then he’s going to pack up, and he’s going to move his operation,” d’Artagnan said. “And we’re going to be stuck here waiting for someone to notice we didn’t come back and he’s going to get away and it’s going to be our fault.”

Porthos straightened and, in the ensuing silence, stared hard across the garage at d’Artagnan. “You’re really worried about those evaluations, aren’t you?”

“Team placement! I rather like being on Team One, thank you very much. I don’t want to be, to be…demoted.” He felt bad even for saying it. All ten teams of the SITR Unit were able to do their jobs and then some, keeping the people of both Quebec province and Quebec City safe. There was no shame in being on any other team besides Team One. 

But none of the others had Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. 

“It’s just an evaluation,” Porthos said. “He looks at your entry scores, he looks at those scores, and looks for improvement. Very rarely does he move people from team to team. He really only does it when there’s personnel conflict, not because you can’t hit the broadside of a barn.”

“Hey!”

“You’ve been doing extra practice sessions with Aramis at the range,” he added. “You forget I live with him. I know when he comes home late.”

d’Artagnan took a breath and visibly collected himself. “Right. But we have to get out of here.”

“And back to QC, yes, I know.”

Porthos moved aside some plastic totes and fairly crowed with excitement when he discovered a toolbox. It was a matter of moments for him to find the tool he needed and, rather than attempt to dismantle the lock itself, he took the hinges out of the other side of the door. 

It swung lopsidedly, and d’Artagnan stepped outside into the sunshine. There wasn’t a vehicle anywhere to be seen. 

“Any more bright ideas on how to get back?” 

There was some more banging from the inside of the garage, and when Porthos appeared in the doorway it was with the tandem bicycle at his side. “Wanna go for a ride?”

 

Athos’s list of _Things I Never Thought I’d See_ had grown dramatically shorter when he’d left his corner office and law degree for a shared conference room and three overgrown men-children. There had been many odd moments over the years, but he was starting to get the feeling that maybe he’d seen everything. Nothing really fazed him anymore. 

Except, perhaps, the sight of Porthos and d’Artagnan pedaling an ancient tandem bicycle down the side of the road clearly intent on heading back into Quebec City proper. It not only made him blink twice, but Aramis drove over onto the shoulder and nearly into the ditch.

Well, Athos mused as Aramis executed a hasty K-turn, nobody had ever said Treville’s Musketeers were conventional.

 

 **Athos & Aramis**  
Athos glanced over as Aramis fidgeted yet again the passenger seat. He reached up and made a minute adjustment to the rearview mirror to better see their passenger in the backseat, and asked quietly, “Problem?”

Aramis tugged at the neck of his vest, shoulders twitching. “Doesn’t feel right.”

He checked his side mirror, and saw the other black SUV – Porthos and d’Artagnan – following behind them. Everything was, from the outside, going smoothly. Still, there was a tension in the vehicle Athos could only attribute to the slime ball handcuffed and seat belted in the middle of the bench seat, relaxed as though he wasn’t about to be sentenced for multiple homicides, and various drug charges. 

Iucci wasn’t about to see the sunshine for a very, very long time. It briefly reminded Athos of his ex-wife. 

Aramis rolled his shoulders again. 

Athos slowed as the vehicle in front of him stopped for a red light. Six more blocks and they would be at the courthouse. Six more blocks and the exaggerated feeling of having a target painted on his back would, hopefully, dissipate. 

Six more blocks and Aramis would stop shifting as though he had a colony of fire ants residing in his boxers.

“I’m going out to see Roger and take him for a ride this weekend,” he said conversationally, mindful to keep his voice low. “Would you like to come with me?”

“Really?” Aramis rested his forearm against the door. “And I still can’t believe you bought a horse.”

Athos snorted. “Well, I wasn’t about to let him go back to that jackass who owned the barn.”

After he and Roger were officially released from police custody and learning the horse was being borderline neglected, Athos had dipped into his sizable bank account and made an offer Roger’s previous owner would have been a moron to refuse. Athos had found him a new barn – complete with other horses for company – rented a stall, and went out to either see him or take him for a ride every chance he got. It sometimes didn’t work during the week, but he made a point to go every weekend. Sometimes he dragged d’Artagnan along, too, though this was the first he’d asked Aramis to go since he’d been released from the hospital a few weeks back.

“Just me? Or can Porthos come, too?” Aramis asked in the tone of voice that spoke of the tiny part of him somewhere deep inside still expecting the rest of his team to abandon him. It was the same tone of voice that made Athos want to find Marsac and beat him to death with his own arms. 

“Of course Porthos can come,” he said, choosing to ignore Aramis’s rougher edges for the moment and cool his own temper. “We’ll drag d’Artagnan.” He cocked his head to the side, considering the traffic in front of him, and added, “They offer lessons, too, in case you ever wanted to learn to ride.”

It was then he noticed there was a vehicle between them and Porthos and d’Artagnan. 

Aramis rolled his shoulders yet again with a small half smile. “Rosalie always wanted a pony.”

“I take it she didn’t get one?” He checked again on their oddly silent passenger, noting the way he continually looked out the right side window. Athos checked his own sightlines as inconspicuously as possible, and didn’t note anything out of the ordinary. 

“Nope. Didn’t even get a puppy.” Aramis grinned over at Athos and added, “She got a little brother, instead.”

The corners of his mouth twitched up even as he slowed down; they wouldn’t make the yellow. “I know that feeling.” 

“I’m sure you do,” he said, side-eyeing Athos slyly.

The car behind them plowed into their bumper with enough force to shove them out into the intersection. Aramis braced both hands on the dashboard; Athos had a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, and before he could move his foot from the brake to the gas to get them out of the way, a bread truck deliberately ran a red light and smashed into the passenger side of the SUV with the right placement and enough force to tip the smaller vehicle on its side while spinning it like a top. 

When everything stopped moving and the rushing in Athos’s ears retreated, he took stock of himself. He was going to be a lovely array of black and blue, but nothing seemed to be broken. There was shattered safety glass all over the place, and the windshield was badly spider-webbed. 

There was an odd quiet in the SUV. Athos took a deep breath, and went to push himself up from where he was lying uncomfortably on his left arm – and damn near blacked out. 

He breathed harshly through the pain, and decided that, perhaps, everything _wasn’t_ not broken. 

A faint popping sound filled the air, and it took Athos a few moments to realize it was gunshots. Gunshots could mean any number of things, including a possible prisoner breakout. 

With what felt like monumental effort, Athos twisted carefully around to hit the release on his seat belt. He rolled partially on his belly to avoid putting any more pressure on his bad arm, and slowly craned his head around to look up at the passenger seat. 

Aramis stared back him as he hung awkwardly from the seatbelt tight across his chest and pelvis. 

For one horrifying moment Athos couldn’t tell if he was breathing and thought he was looking at a dead man. Then he blinked. And blinked again. The only thing Athos’s otherwise fried brain caught on to was that corpses didn’t blink.

Athos awkwardly worked his way to his knees and leaned on the driver’s seat for support. His bad arm brushed the steering wheel, and he grunted in pain, the world wavering sickeningly around him. 

“Ow,” Aramis whispered. 

With great effort, he got to his feet and, mindful of his head, peered around the seat. The bread truck had demolished most of the rear of the vehicle, including a good portion of the backseat. Iucci had been tossed like a ragdoll, unable to brace himself as his hands were cuffed behind his back. He lay crumpled against the door, and Athos couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. 

“’Thos?”

His attention swung back to Aramis as fast as his aching head would allow. 

Aramis swallowed thickly, and murmured, eyes wide, “I don’ feel goo’.”

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and saw a variety of emergency personnel beyond the windshield. 

“’Thos.”

“Right here, Aramis.” It seemed like every muscle in his midsection was stretched to the breaking point, but he extended his good arm to wrap his fingers around Aramis’s limply dangling ones. Aramis squeezed back as best he could, chest rising and falling shallowly. 

“What hurts, ‘Mis?”

He let out a small huff of laughter that ended in a bitten-off groan. “What doesn’t?”

“Can you feel everything? Can you feel your toes?” Athos asked.

Aramis’s forehead screwed up in concentration. “Yeah. Move ‘em, too.”

“Good.” He heard a tapping sound and looked over – John, the paramedic Team One knew best, stood on the other side of the windshield with a couple of firefighters. He mimed covering his face, backing away when Athos nodded to show he’d gotten the message. 

“Aramis? Aramis, close your eyes.” Athos waited until Aramis had done so before tucking his face in the crook of his elbow. 

There was a crash, followed by the sound of shattered glass again, and when Athos turned his face back to where the windshield previously was, John was in the interior with them. 

“Athos, Aramis,” he said brightly, reaching back for the bag another paramedic handed to him among the glass fragments. “Nice to see you boys. Hell of a mess.”

Aramis smiled; Athos looked between him and the other paramedic who had invaded their little space as well. 

“This is Kaci, Kaci, this is Officer de la Fere and Officer d’Herblay of the Special Investigations and Tactical Response Unit.” John flashed a penlight in Aramis’s eyes. “Bit of delayed pupil response. Probable concussion. Your head hurt, Aramis?

“Yeah.” He spoke the word quickly around his shallow breaths. 

“Chest hurt, too?” Reaching back, John took the C-collar Kaci handed him and then made motions around his general torso area. “Right in here? Hurt to breathe?”

Aramis answered affirmatively again, and Athos leaned a little more heavily on the seat that was, essentially, keeping him upright. 

“We’re going to get you out of here and to the hospital, okay?” John said as he threaded the C-collar carefully around Aramis’s neck. “You feel all your limbs? Can you wiggle your toes?”

“Yes,” Athos said. “I asked him that already.” He smiled softly at Aramis’s look of gratitude, and tried not to let any alarm show on his face; Aramis’s lips were beginning to turn the faintest blue. 

It seemed to take forever to get Aramis out of his seatbelt and out of the SUV on a backboard through the windshield. Athos wasn’t allowed help any further than keeping an increasingly pale and blue Aramis calm and fairly quiet. 

There wasn’t space in the ambulance for him, and when he was finally alone in the intersection and able to look at the carnage, he wavered. It was a damn lucky thing he and Aramis were alive. John thought it partially due to the rigidness provided by their Kevlar vests. 

The same Kevlar vest he held in his right hand. 

Porthos, d’Artagnan, and Treville were waiting for him near the front end of the totaled SUV. The coroner was inside the wreck verifying Iucci was dead, and Athos ambled over to them, arm and head throbbing in time with his heart beat. 

“That was terrifying,” d’Artagnan said, gesturing to whole of the accident scene in front of him. “Watching it and not being able to do a damn thing.”

“Better get to the hospital, yeah?” Porthos asked. He looked anxiously at the direction the ambulance had gone. “How was he?”

Cyanotic, barely breathing, and in more pain that anyone man should experience without the bliss of unconsciousness. Athos, however, didn’t say any of those things. What he said, instead, was, “Fighting.”

Porthos smiled tightly, and clapped Athos on the upper arm on his way by. 

Athos flailed for something to hold onto with his good arm even as everything exploded in white before fading into darkness. 

 

He woke feeling oddly detached from reality and like something had died in his mouth. It couldn’t have been alcohol, as the last coherent memory he had was transporting Iucci to the courthouse, and being rammed by a bread truck. 

Bread truck. Accident. 

_Aramis._

Athos tried to push himself up and failed miserably, falling back to the mattress with a soft exhalation of air. Every muscle in his torso seemed to hurt, and there was a dull, pulsing throb in his arm. 

An arm complete with a violently neon green cast from his knuckles to just above his elbow. 

_I’m going to kill him,_ Athos thought, wiggling his puffy fingers with eye-watering effort. 

“Athos?”

He looked at the foot of the hospital bed to see Porthos. The big man smiled crookedly. 

“Green?” Athos croaked. 

“Be thankful it wasn’t pink.”

Valid point. Athos rolled his head on the pillow and realized he was in a single room. Swallowing carefully, he looked at Porthos and asked, “Aramis?”

“Couple floors up in recovery,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his face. “He was – it was bad. Dislocated hip, cracked pelvis, mostly cracked ribs except for the one that broke and punctured his lung. But he’s fighting, and the doctors say he’ll make a full recovery.”

Athos sagged, tension he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding leaking from him in a rush. 

“See him?” He licked dry lips and fought the siren call of sleep. 

“Soon.” Porthos reached down and wrapped a hand around Athos’s ankle, squeezing the bone gently through the blanket. “Sleep.”

He didn’t want to. He’d just woken up. But with Porthos rubbing his thumb soothingly over Athos’s ankle bone as though he instinctively knew it was the one place on his body that didn’t feel like it had been run over by a bread truck he lost the battle to stay awake and slid back into sleep. 

 

It was Athos’s last full day in the hospital when Aramis was finally well enough to be moved into a more private room. It was rather disconcerting, really, as Athos had gone to sleep the only person in the room – except for d’Artagnan, sprawled uncomfortably in the hard plastic chair – and woke up to the sight of Aramis in the next bed and Porthos sitting precariously on the radiator under the window. 

Much later, after the pair of them had dozed in and out all day and the others had been kicked out once visiting hours were over, Athos found himself awake. His arm was a slow burn kind of pain, a result, he was told, of the metal rod put in that would fade until he’d healed enough to get the damn thing out. 

d’Artagnan delighted in calling him Iron Man for some reason, and Athos hadn’t had the heart to point out the rod itself was made from stainless steel. 

He stretched as best he could without moving his left side, and looked over to his right. In the soft glow from the light on above his pillow, Aramis looked oddly peaceful. A knot something Athos couldn’t identify uncoiled slightly in his chest. This vision of Aramis was infinitely better than the previous image he had, of blue lips and shallow breaths, trapped by a seat belt. 

Athos startled when Aramis blinked at him across the foot and a half of space between their beds. He couldn’t read Aramis’s expression, and for a moment thought Aramis might blame him for what happened. It was technically a rescue mission gone wrong, and the very people who were supposed to get Iucci out of custody were the ones who killed him. 

No, Aramis wouldn’t blame him. Not for that. Athos called himself an asshole and a moron for even thinking it.

Still, there did seem to be something on Aramis’s mind. Athos, after having years of practice, simply waited him out.

“N-next time,” Aramis whispered hoarsely. “ _I’ll_ drive.”

Athos snorted, and finally felt like the world was spinning properly again. “Like hell, Aramis. Like hell.”

There was an odd little half sound that Athos had come to recognize as a laugh when it would hurt to let his ribcage expand enough to do it fully, followed by a breathy, “Next time – take a taxi.”

Well, in all honesty, it wouldn’t be the first unorthodox thing they’d done, and it would, Athos knew, be far from the last. Not, of course, that he’d have it any other way.


	14. Back on the Horse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“My God,” Athos said, “they’re like a pair of over-excited puppies.”_
> 
> _Porthos, leaning against the wall next to him, grunted. “Yeah, but if the one stops moving long enough he’s going to be asleep.”_
> 
> A short, fluffy add-on to _Planes, Trains, and (Improvised) Automobiles_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quite honestly I had this vision of Athos, Aramis, and Roger, and the ride that didn't happen because they were in that car accident last chapter, and felt compelled to write it.
> 
> It's so damn fluffy it's like a truckload of cotton candy wrapped in fuzzy unicorns. Like, all your teeth are going to rot in your head. 
> 
> So. In related news. The Savoy chapter is coming. It should be arriving sometime in September (it was my summer Big Bang fic at the Beta Branch) and it should have an AU version of the Good Soldier as a follow up. It's coming. I swear. 
> 
> You all are seriously so awesome for sticking with me even though I go weeks with nothing new. I could wax poetic about everyone in this fandom, you're so fabulous. Seriously.

“My God,” Athos said, “they’re like a pair of over-excited puppies.”

Porthos, leaning against the wall next to him, grunted. “Yeah, but if the one stops moving long enough he’s going to be asleep.”

“True.”

On the practice mat in front of them, d’Artagnan coaxed Aramis into a yoga position that looked more likely snap muscles than stretch them. Aramis, though bright-eyed, had gone beyond tired and was in the special kind of headspace Athos called “one energy drink short of a heart attack.” It also meant that when Aramis finally crashed it would be hard and brutal.

Gently, d’Artagnan shifted Aramis’s hip into the proper position; Aramis grimaced, breathing hard through his nose.

“Aramis?” Porthos asked.

“They’re tight.”

“Breathe. In and out,” d’Artagnan commanded softly. “We did a lot of quick movement and need to stretch.”

It was true, too. Aramis and d’Artagnan had been on the mat sparring, practicing restraints and escapes, and generally doing their best to wear out Aramis’s return to duty slip before the ink was dry.

Athos rubbed his forehead carefully with his left hand, mindful of his cast. It was his third, actually. The first had been in the immediate aftermath of the car accident he and Aramis had been in escorting a prisoner, and the second, put on after they had taken out the metal rod in his forearm, had met a watery demise when he’d been shoved off a pier into the river. Everyone was well aware Athos would be placed back on desk duty if he couldn’t keep his current one intact. 

“He’s going to sleep like a rock tonight,” Porthos said. 

“Which one?”

The pair on the mat moved into a new pose – “frog,” Athos thought he heard d’Artagnan say – and Aramis’s face smoothed out with a heartfelt sigh. Compared to the pair Athos remembered seeing on those same features, first in the overturned SUV and then in the hospital, this was a more than welcome improvement.

 

Contrary to popular belief, Aramis didn’t fall asleep on his plate at Athos’s kitchen table that night. It had, somewhere along the line, become dtradition for them to have dinner at Athos’s on Friday nights, unless they were working. Dumas enjoyed the exra attention, Athos enjoyed having a full kitchen, and it was a win for everybody else in that they didn’t need to fix dinner. 

The dishes had been done, another pot of coffee had been made, and Aramis and d’Artagnan had retreated to the living room with Dumas. 

Speaking of which, there was a distinct lack of noise from the living room that made Athos very nervous. Porthos had once compared the two of them to toddlers: the level of sound they produced was inversely proportional to to the level of mayhem they were engaged in. 

Athos’s partially buried, not-so-dormant-anymore older brother instincts kicked him hard in the ass. He took his coffee cup, motioned to Porthos to follow, and went to investigate. 

d’Artagnan was sprawled on the couch, snoring gently; Aramis and Dumas were nowhere in sight.

He put his mug on the coffee table and carefully shook d’Artagnan’s by the shoulder. “d’Artagnan? D’Artagnan, where’s Aramis?”

D’Artagnan murmured sleepily, and blinked awake; Athos looked at Portho, who stood in the doorway to his bedroom.

“C’mere.” The big man waved the two of them over. 

“Well,” d’Artagnan muttered, “he’d said he was tired.”

Aramis lay stretched ou on the bed, propped partially on his right side by Athos’s body pillow along his back. Porthos had chuckled long and hard about Athos having a body pillow until, blushing bright red, Athos had murmured something about Ninon, side-sleeping, and spooning. Porthos hadn’t mentioned anything about it since. Granted, most nights Porthos _was_ the body pillow, which also might have had something to do with his continued silence on the subject.

Dumas was curled against Aramis’s chest, eyes closed and purring audibly. He was oddly content for a cat who’d had someone fall asleep while petting him, evidenced by Aramis’s lax fingers buried in the soft fur.

“Leave him,” Athos said quietly. 

They left the bedroom door wide open and retreated to the living room. d’Artagnan yawned and searched his pockets for his car keys. 

“You good to drive?” Porthos asked.

“Yeah.” He stifled a yawn. “It’s not far.”

“You’re coming tomorrow, yes?” Athos picked up his mug to have something to do with his hands.

“To the barn? Yeah. I’ll meet you out there.” D’Artagnan held up his keys. “See you in the morning.”

His mother would have kicked his ass for not seeing his guest out properly, but Athos was too damn comfortable wedged in the corner of his couch. Porthos sprawled on the other end, and they heaved twin sighs of contentment. The apartment was quiet, Aramis was napping – they both knew he wouldn’t sleep through the night, he rarely did unless he was totally physically exhausted or heavily medicated – and they had no active cases.

Team One was, technically, medically cleared for duty. Only half of them were without some sort of annoying injury, though Athos would probably shoot anybody who questioned his ability to do his job with a cast.

Athos moved enough to put his mug on the coffee table again. He settled back, content to drift in and out of awareness. Both he and Porthos had at least one ear on the bedroom out of habit, and he wondered belatedly if he should have covered Aramis with a blanket. The younger man got cold easily, and it generally woke him up before he was ready. 

Sometime later, Aramis staggered out of Athos’s bedroom and made his way over to the couch. Athos grunted as all fifteen pounds of Dumas landed heavily in his lap. Aramis, also toting the blanket normally folded at the foot of the bed, climbed into the limited space between Athos and Porthos. Porthos, without so much as cracking an eye open, shifted onto his back more. Aramis flopped his upper body on Porthos’s chest, face buried in his neck, and threw the blanket around all of them as Athos tipped sideways to rest the side of his head and shoulder along Aramis’s back. Dumas curled in the space between Athos’s navel and the back of Aramis’s knees. 

They shifted minutely, and finally settled.

 

“Trust me?” Athos asked, holding out the simple black helmet for Aramis to take.

“Is that a rhetorical question?”

The corners of his mouth twitched; Aramis took the helmet and put it on.

“Do you want the block or do you think you can get up and over?” He hovered awkwardly as Aramis put one foot in the stirrup and heaved himself up. He settled heavily; Roger shifted on his four feet as the weight on his back stopped moving around. Athos patted Aramis’s calf and took a step forward.

“You’re – you’re not – wait!”

He looked calmly up at Aramis, who asked in a small voice, “You’re not riding with me?”

“I trust Roger,” Athos said, stroking the horse’s nose. “You trust me and my judgment every time we go into a hostile situation. We won’t let anything happen to you here, either.”

It was a damn near replica of what Athos had told him all those months ago when they’d first found Roger. Horse and man had seen him to safety then, and Aramis had never had a reason to doubt Athos’s word. 

He probably never would, either.

“Okay.”

 

Porthos nudged d’Artagnan with his elbow and pointed across the field toward the doorway to the barn. Aramis was up on Roger. “That didn’t take as long as I thought it would.”

“Aramis doesn’t like horses?”

“He’s leery of ‘em.” He refrained from adding on that not everyone had had a country upbringing. D’Artagnan was the son of a farmer, and putting him in a barn full of horses had been an interesting sight to witness. Namely, Aramis had called him the horse whisperer. 

“They’re mostly gentle creatures,” d’Artagnan said, leaning against the railing next to Porthos. “Athos and Roger are very good to each other.”

Which Porthos knew was the only reason Aramis was out there at all. 

Athos and Roger started forward only to stop again. They watched Athos pet the horse’s nose, and whatever he said must have been enough as Aramis nodded, and they started off again.

Man, horse, and rider went in a slow arc around the field, coming to follow the fence line. The longer he was up there, the more comfortable he became, and Porthos watched with a small smile as the tension Aramis had been carrying in his shoulders for what seemed like months finally eased away. 

“Athos?” Aramis said as they neared d’Artagnan and Porthos. 

“Had enough?”

“Yeah. For today.”

Athos brought them to a stop and went around to make sure Aramis didn’t fall as he slid from the saddle. His legs took a moment to accept his weight, and he walked rather oddly the rest of the way to the others as Athos swung effortlessly up onto Roger’s back. 

“I don’t know how the original Musketeers spent hours on horseback,” he said, climbing up to sit on the top rail and resting his arm on Porthos’s shoulder for balance. 

“Practice,” d’Artagnan said, straightening. “You’re going to let him have his head, aren’t you?”

Athos leaned forward over Roger’s neck, and flat-out grinned. “We’ll be back.”

The big horse shook himself once, twice, and then, with Athos still leaned forward in the saddle, took off like a shot toward the far side of the field and the gate opened into another open fallow field. 

Porthos chuckled, Aramis unclipped the helmet but didn’t take it off, and d’Artagnan decided there wasn’t a much better way to spend a Saturday afternoon.


	15. All in the Timing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Athos swore viciously in his own head, and knew his own expression had to mirror Treville’s look of incredulousness. He also saw the captain’s eyes flick to Constance’s desk – empty, as she was out of town for the week to visit her brothers – and then settle on Athos._
> 
> _“Athos will take you to the hospital and we’ll get Aramis recalled as quickly as possible.”_
> 
> _Louisa inched closer to Athos; the words finally sank in, and he offered her his arm rather belatedly. Hospital? Right. She was pregnant. Her water had broke. She was having a baby._
> 
> _**He** was a labor coach?_
> 
> Aramis is missing, Louisa's in labor, and Athos, Porthos, and d'Artagnan are along for the ride.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit it's another update in less than a month! 
> 
> Here, have some more fluff. Take in all the sugar you can people, because the next chapter is going to destroy whatever feelings you have left. 
> 
> Anyhoo. Some of you have asked for a specific Danni story. Here's her birth. It's fluffy. It's probably not medically accurate (if it isn't, please let me know so I can tweak details). [I was NOT in the room when my own niece was born. So this is speculation about how it actually happened.] 
> 
> Also, this got a little maudlin and angsty because Athos. Yeah. 
> 
> I don't own a damn thing other than the usual. And I still adore you all.

“Sit down before you fall down. Now.”

Athos sank gratefully into the chair at the end of Constance’s desk at Treville’s order and resisted the urge to wrap his arms around his midsection like it would actually help. The only thing that was going to do any good for the pattern of bruises across his torso and the aching ribs underneath was time, but considering the state of things – and Athos’s impatience when it came to his own infirmity – well, he wasn’t overly fond of sitting on his ass in the Garrison. 

“I thought I told you to go home,” Treville continued in the same tone of voice he usually reserved for when Aramis felt inclined to shoot rubber bands at visitors to their floor. 

Apparently it was a running contest between all the SITRU snipers. There were bonus points if the visitor was a fellow sniper as the theory was they should have seen it coming and therefore dodged it. On the board at the range was a column of numbers; Aramis’s score was disgustingly high. 

“I did go home for a bit,” Athos said, flexing his jaw. The left side of his face was one large, ugly purple bruise.

Treville leveled a glare at him, the one usually reserved for Aramis that was also a wordless, _This is not funny and you are not amusing._

“How are Porthos and d’Artagnan doing?” he asked, going for a tactical change of subject rather than beat a dead horse. 

“ _They’re_ doing as they were told,” the captain said. “They’re checking each of the cabins up there one by one. The last time they checked in they said they’d seen some more drag marks, so they can’t be very far behind.”

While part of Athos had had enough of jaunting through the woods to last him for months, there was a larger part of him that demanded he get off his ass and get out there to search for his missing teammate. Though missing wasn’t quite right. Aramis had been taken hostage after he and Athos had been ambushed on their reconnaissance mission. 

Athos didn’t remember much after the initial volley of shots. He’d taken four in the vest and then promptly fell down a steep hill to land in a heap at the bottom. The last thing he really – vaguely – remembered was Aramis fighting like a hellion to get to him even as he was carted off, his captors content to leave Athos for dead. 

He was further saved from having to find something more to contribute to the conversation – including a reason for him to still be at the Garrison despite his bruises and strained muscles – by a rather harried woman all but barreling in from the direction of the elevator as fast as her heavily pregnant body would allow. 

Ever the gentleman, Athos rose at the sight of Aramis’s eldest sister. 

Louisa, much like her sibling, didn’t feel the need to mince words when the situation called for it. “Where’s my brother?”

“He’s out in the field,” Treville said carefully, stepping close enough to provide an arm should she need one. “Is everything alright?”

“No,” she huffed, arms wrapped around her middle. “My water broke half an hour ago and my brother’s my labor coach.”

Athos swore viciously in his own head, and knew his own expression had to mirror Treville’s look of incredulousness. He also saw the captain’s eyes flick to Constance’s desk – empty, as she was out of town for the week to visit her brothers – and then settle on Athos. 

“Athos will take you to the hospital and we’ll get Aramis recalled as quickly as possible.”

Louisa inched closer to Athos; the words finally sank in, and he offered her his arm rather belatedly. Hospital? Right. She was pregnant. Her water had broke. She was having a baby. 

_He_ was a labor coach?

“Where is Rene?” she asked. 

“I can’t tell you details,” Treville said, herding both her and a silently terrified Athos toward the elevator. “But we’ll get him recalled and have him come straight to the hospital. Montreal General, right?”

“Yes.” Her worried eyes met his, and she used her hand to prevent the doors from closing. “You’ll – he’ll be there soon, right?”

“As soon as we can,” he assured her, nodding subtly to his lieutenant. 

Seemingly satisfied, the elevator doors closed on the pair of them. Treville ran a hand over his face and pulled his phone from his pocket with the other. He’d need to tell d’Artagnan and Porthos to put a rush on what was already a delicate situation. 

And under no circumstances was anyone to tell Louisa Aramis had been hostage for the past two days in unknown conditions.

 

Cell service was spotty that deep in the woods; signal came through almost by miracle through the thick branches overhead, and Porthos stopped dead when his phone buzzed in his pocket. Relatively sure of their position – and that no one would hear them – he answered it with a hissed, “Hello?”

_”Porthos? What’s your ETA to the next cabin?”_

He glanced at d’Artagnan. The kid might have been green to the ways of the Musketeers, but he was a cop and he had good instincts. Even if one of them wasn’t a steady sense of direction. 

“Dunno. Fifteen minutes, maybe? Why?” He couldn’t help the wary tone. The captain rarely called during missions when it wasn’t utterly important. A cold ball settled in his belly; maybe Athos had relapsed somehow. Maybe he was worse off than he’d seemed that afternoon at the hospital, after all his tests. Maybe a rib had actually broken and punctured a lung – 

_”Louisa’s water broke and she’s on her way to the hospital with Athos.”_

Whatever Porthos had been expecting it certainly wasn’t _that_.

“You’re shitting me,” he said sharply, drawing d’Artagnan’s full attention.

_”I wish I was. Aramis is her labor coach.”_

Porthos took the phone away from his ear and stared at it. Long enough for Treville to start shouting on the other end. 

“Still here,” Porthos said, cutting Treville off mid-rant. 

_”Put a rush on it. I’d rather not find out what she’ll do if he’s not there in time for the birth.”_ Treville paused, then added, _”And Athos will most likely appreciate it, too.”_

Feeling as though he’d been hit in the head with a shovel, Porthos ended the call and slipped the phone back in his pocket. 

“New intel?” d’Artagnan asked hopefully. 

“Nope,” he drawled. “Treville told us to put a rush on it. Aramis’s sister Louisa’s baby is coming and Athos is currently the only one she has at the hospital.”

d’Artagnan wore a suitably pole-axed expression. “Aramis has a sister?”

“Two.” Porthos started walking again at a faster pace, though still bearing in mind quiet was the name of the game. “Louisa and Rosalie. Louisa’s pregnant.”

“Oh.” He followed along sedately, and came up besides Porthos when the other man stopped at the edge of a clump of bushes, a rustic cabin some eighty yards ahead. “When is she due?”

“Today, apparently,” Porthos murmured. “So we need to get Aramis, get back to QC, and get to the hospital.” _For all our sakes,_ he added mentally. _And mostly for Athos’s._

 

Pushing a pregnant woman down the labor and delivery wing of Quebec General was probably not what his ER physician had had in mind when she told Athos to take it easy for about a week, but it couldn’t be helped. And besides, the periodic pulling pain in his torso took his mind off what was sure to make him spiral all the way down into hell without so much as either a hand basket or a look back. 

Namely, Athos had thought, at one point shortly after his wedding ceremony, that he might one day be pushing a pregnant Anne down a similar hallway, Thomas an uncontainable ball of energy trailing in his wake. His brother would have been ecstatic to be an uncle, and Athos, up until this moment, hadn’t realized how much a fairly large part of him had wanted the chance to be a father. 

A petite blonde stepped out from behind the central nurse’s station, and Athos was so distracted in his own head he nearly ran her over with Louisa’s wheelchair.

“Is it time, Louisa?” she – her nametag read Carey – asked with a smile. She glanced at Athos, and then went back for a full once-over. “Is this your brother? Rene?”

“She’s on her way,” Louisa said, one hand protectively over her belly. She couldn’t twist around to see Athos’s face, so she flailed her free hand up over her shoulder, blindly looking for any part of Athos within fairly easy reach. “This is my other brother, Athos.”

Athos wrapped his fingers around hers and tried to remember not to squeeze too hard as he forgot how to breathe.

Carey’s forehead crinkled. “I thought you only had one brother.”

“Yes,” Louisa said. “But Rene has three men as close to him as brothers. Athos is one of them.”

She must have seen her fair share of non-traditional families, for Carey took the oddly worded explanation in stride. “Lovely to meet you, Athos. I’m assuming you’re going to be her coach until Rene gets here?”

“Yes,” he croaked, feeling as though he were having a distinct out of body experience in which his brain and his mouth weren’t quite on the same page. “Sure.”

Louisa winced, squeezing Athos’s fingers. 

Carey beckoned the pair of them forward. “Come on. Let’s get you settled and see where you’re at.”

_She’s pregnant and in some form of labor_ , Athos nearly blurted, doing his best to steer the wheelchair with one hand. _Where the hell do you_ think _she’s at?_

For the first time in a long time, Athos took a leaf out of Aramis’s book and prayed to a higher power he wasn’t entirely sure he believed in anymore for d’Artagnan and Porthos to find and get Aramis to Louisa’s bedside as fast as possible.

 

The next cabin they checked had been empty, too, but the scuffle marks continued further on, deeper into the woods. They were about halfway to the next one when they heard gunshots. Porthos froze, tugging d’Artagnan to a stop beside him. His ears strained for any sound, and he thought he could hear screams. There were more shots, and a different voice yelled out something sharply in a language that was neither English nor French. 

“Spanish,” Porthos muttered. “Aramis!” He grabbed the handle on the back of d’Artagnan’s vest and hauled ass forward toward the sound of mayhem and carnage

In the end it was Aramis who found them, not the other way around. The cabin door banged open and he staggered drunkenly out, Glock in one hand and knife in the other. Porthos, still with a grip on d’Artagnan’s vest, pulled the youngest behind him. The look in Aramis’s eye was downright feral, and Porthos knew he was most likely caught somewhere between the past and the present. 

“Aramis?” Porthos said. 

Aramis raised the gun; Porthos stiffened, and he felt d’Artagnan flinch. He fired one shot, and Porthos heard the thud of a body hitting the ground behind him. Aramis shivered once like a dog, then twice, and took a deep breath.

“Aramis?” he tried again, inching closer. 

“I. _Hate._ Camping.”Aramis tossed both knife and gun away into the underbrush and started forward. His left right leg buckled dangerously, and he stayed upright through sheer force of will. 

“Are they – “ d’Artagnan swallowed audibly. 

“Dead,” he said flatly. “All of them. For what they did to Athos.” He clenched his jaw and scrubbed a hand over his face. “They – they – “

“Aramis,” Porthos said slowly, remembering the reason why they were in more of a hurry than they otherwise might be. “Aramis, Athos is alive.”

“What?” Disbelief warred with hope on his features, and Porthos realized in that moment that Aramis had spent the past two days thinking Athos was dead at the bottom of a ravine. 

“He’s alive,” he repeated. 

“He’s at the hospital with your sister,” d’Artagnan added. 

“ _What!?_ ” Aramis’s attention snapped the youngest and newest member of their team with such an intensity that d’Artagnan took an involuntary step backward. “What’s wrong with my sister? Oh, Jesus, is it the baby? Is something wrong with the baby?”

Porthos stamped down hard on d’Artagnan’s foot. “Yeah – it’s coming. Louisa’s in labor and Athos is with her at the hospital.” He gestured back along the path they’d come. “So, we gotta go.”

Aramis seemed rooted to the spot. “ _Athos_ is her _labor coach_?”

“Do you have a concussion we don’t know about or are you imitating a parrot today?” 

That seemed to snap him out of it, and he hobbled forward, pausing long enough in front of Porthos to grab him by the front of his Kevlar vest and haul him in for a kiss. 

D’Artagnan’s mouth dropped open.

“Yes, I’m very glad you’re alright, but we have a baby to meet,” Porthos murmured, one hand sliding briefly into Aramis’s unruly hair.

“Well, let’s get going.” He started down the path, grabbing a stupefied d’Artagnan by the vest. “You, too, whelp.”

 

Athos slumped forward in the hard plastic chair all hospital rooms seemed to have, unsure whether or not to hold Louisa’s hand. He’d waited in the hall while Carey got her into a gown and settled on the bed, the various monitors beeping away reassuringly.

“The faster one is the baby,” she said, pointing to the monitor to his right. “She’s got a strong heart, and kicks like a footballer.”

He smiled. “Maybe he will be when he grows up.”

“Or maybe he’ll be a Musketeer, like his uncles.” She threaded her fingers through his, holding them tightly as she breathed through another contraction. “You know you’re her uncle, right, Athos? Same as my brother.”

“That was very kind of you,” he said, dipping his head. “What you said to Carey in the hallway.”

Louisa smiled, and Athos was reminded of her brother. “I meant it. You’re a brother to Rene, and that makes you mine and Rosalie’s, too.” Her expression turned sly as she added, “Everyone should have sisters like us.”

Athos envisioned all the ways his childhood would have been different if he’d had two older sisters instead of a younger brother, and he couldn’t help but feel that Clara and Bastian d’Herblay deserved sainthood for having successfully seen three children – one of them being Aramis, who Athos would swear up and down some days hadn’t progressed past the age of sixteen – into adulthood.

“I don’t think the world can handle everyone having sisters like you,” he said when he finally found his voice. 

She laughed. “Rene’s the hellion. Rosalie has middle-child syndrome. We eldest are angels.”

Remembering all the mischief he’d coaxed Thomas into simply because he was the older brother, Athos could safely attest that he had been no such angelic child. 

Louisa squeezed his hand so hard he thought he could hear the bones grinding together. He let her grip as hard as she needed to in order to bear the pain, and looked around the small room. He was sitting in the only chair, and there wasn’t much for decoration except the neutral wallpaper. Still, something didn’t feel right, and it wasn’t just the fact that Athos didn’t know if Porthos and d’Artagnan had managed to track down Aramis yet. 

Then it hit him: where was the baby’s father?

“Athos?”

He looked at her with wide eyes. Well, with one wide eye as the other was partially swollen shut to go with the bruising on the side of his face. Thankfully, she hadn’t commented on that. Then again, the first time she’d met him, he’d been sporting bruises then, too.

“Ask what you want to ask before you explode,” she said wryly. 

Gesturing to her and the rest of the room in general, he unstuck his tongue enough to ask, “Where’s your husband?”

“I don’t have one,” she grunted. She breathed out through her mouth. “You don’t need a husband to have a child.”

Athos was confused, but he also wasn’t one to pry. Not when he wasn’t, in fact, her blood brother.

“I have financial stability,” she said quietly, eyes flicking between his face and the fetal monitor off his shoulder. “I have a good career, a good life here in Quebec City. I have family support.” She smiled. “Victor Hugo wrote that to love another is to see the face of God. I wish to see my face in another. I want to be a mother, Athos. I want to know that happiness.”

The words lodged in his throat. Her reasons were many of the same as his own, when he examined his own motives for once thinking he could have a family. He could, sometimes in the quieter moments, still see a little boy or girl with Anne’s dark hair and his eyes running through the halls of his parents’ French chateau during the summer holiday. It was no secret his mother had wanted grandchildren when he’d gotten married, and Athos felt a modicum of guilt she still had none. 

Instead he’d given her a scandal, a dead son, and a man who had scorned his corner office in favor of working for the government as a law enforcement officer.

Though for all he’d lost, he’d gained some, too. He’d gained more siblings than he knew what to do with. And for Louisa to say, without a doubt, that she wanted him involved with her child…it was overwhelming. 

Porthos, on the other hand, would be ecstatic. He loved babies. He loved to spoil any woman with the last name d’Herblay, too, as often as he could get away with it.

“Do you know what the child is?” he asked, trying to steer the conversation away from the deep quiet they had just had. 

“A girl.” Louisa hissed sharply. “Danielle.”

Athos knew that look on her face. It was the same one Aramis wore when had at least one more ace up his sleeve than anyone expected. Or had a pool cue in his hands.

Louisa grunted. 

“Should I get Carey?” he asked. 

She nodded, fisting the sheet underneath her when he let go of her. 

Moving more like a man in his eighties than one in his early thirties, Athos shuffled to the door and poked his head out. Thankfully, the nurses’ station was roughly six feet away from him – Carey, too.

“Hey, Carey? She’s, uh, she’s asking for you.”

Carey bustled out from behind the circular desk and breezed past Athos into the room. “Hey, girl. Let me take a peek.”

He hung back, not wanting to see part of her that he shouldn’t, and leaned against the wall in the corridor, watching the direction of the elevators. The others should have been there by now, shouldn’t they have been?

_Maybe,_ the nasty little voice in the back of Athos’s head whispered. _Maybe they didn’t find him. Maybe they didn’t get him and he’s dead in the woods._

“No,” Athos muttered. Aramis hadn’t survived one forest hell to die in another. “He’ll be here.” Soon, too. He didn’t want to explain to Louisa why her brother wasn’t there.

 

“I’m driving,” Aramis said, limping to the driver’s side door. “Porthos navigates.”

Porthos pointed to his leg. “What did you do to that?”

“I think I broke it.” He held his hand out. “Keys. Now.”

“You _broke_ it?” Porthos said as d’Artagnan practically yelped, “What?”

“And I just hiked two miles through the damn woods. Now can I have the car keys? Please? I’d like to meet my niece sometime this century.”

D’Artagnan climbed into the backseat and put his seatbelt on. Riding with Porthos had been an experience, and he wasn’t entirely sure if his stomach – or the rest of his body – could survive Aramis on a deadline if he drove in any similar way.

“She’s having a girl?” Porthos said gleefully, strapping himself in as well. 

“Danielle.” Aramis cranked the engine, and adjusted the rearview mirror. “Danielle d’Herblay.” He grinned, threw the car in gear, and all but gunned the engine. d’Artagnan clutched the door handle and breathed forcefully through his nose.

 

“I think you’re ready, Louisa,” Carey said, strapping on a fresh pair of gloves and peeling back the blanket to Louisa’s bent knees. “You’re at ten centimeters.”

She took a deep breath and let it out with a whine. She clutched Athos’s hand so hard her knuckles went white, though he didn’t flinch. 

“When you feel the urge to, you need to bear down.” Carey looked up, the corners of her eyes crinkling over the top of her surgical mask. 

“Can’t,” Louisa said. Her hair was plastered to her head with sweat. “Rene should be here. Where’s my brother, Athos? Where is he?”

“He’s on his way,” Athos said, trying to diffuse the tension. “He’ll be here as soon as he can.”

Her back arched with another low, guttural sound that seemed to come from her toes. “Talk to me.”

Momentarily dumbfounded, Athos blurted, “What?”

“Talk. To. Me. Distract me.” She fixed him with a glare. “You’re my coach, Athos. Coach me.”

He knew absolutely nothing about coaching a woman through labor. He didn’t know where to start, and at a total loss for something suitable – empty words of encouragement didn’t seem good enough – his brain latched onto something she’d mentioned earlier. “You’ve read Victor Hugo?”

“ _Les Miserables_ ,” she said. “I read it years ago.”

“And yet you remember it. Have you read other classics, as well?”

“Mama had – “ she paused, gritting her teeth against the sensation in her midsection. “Mama had a shelf of classics in the living room. Jane Austen. Mark Twain. Hugo. Dumas. We read most of them by the time we were sixteen. Mama loved traditional literature.”

She came partially off the pillow propped behind her, grinding Athos’s fingers together. 

“Louisa, honey, please.” Carey looked beseechingly at her again. “You’re ready. The baby’s ready. I need some big pushes from you.”

There was a commotion in the hallway, and Aramis careened into the room like he was having a baby of his own. He limped badly, seemed to be covered in half the forest – though he had made an effort to clean up, at least a little – and he locked eyes with Athos long enough to convey he was incredibly grateful, both for Athos’s continued existence and the fact he was there with Louisa.

“My God, Rene, where the hell – have you been rolling in dirt?”

“Florecita,” he said, kissing the side of her head as he took her other hand. “Nice to see you, too.”

“You’re late.” Her back arched again.

Athos, from the sound she let out, was very, very glad he’d been born male. Traditional birth – with no drugs, she’d refused the epidural earlier – looked and sounded like the most painful experience a body could have. 

Louisa screamed, Aramis spoke to her non-stop in Spanish, too fast for Athos to keep up with the smattering of words he knew, and the room waited with baited breath. 

She slumped back to the bed, utterly boneless and shaking with the release of adrenaline. Aramis stroked her hair back from her forehead, pressing a kiss to the sweaty skin. 

“Well, you’re a quiet thing, aren’t you,” Carey said as she performed the tests she needed to before swaddling the infant in a blanket. 

Louisa sat up a little more against her pillows, tears in her eyes as Carey placed Danielle in her arms for the first time. Mother and daughter looked at each other.

“She’s beautiful, Florecita,” Aramis murmured, ghosting a hand over the shock of dark hair on Danielle’s head. 

Athos brought the chair around to the other side of the bed and discreetly helped Aramis sink into it. He stretched his leg out as best he could, and found it easy to ignore the aches and pains of his captivity. It would catch up with his fairly soon, he was certain, but until then there wasn’t anywhere else he needed to be. 

He startled slightly at Porthos’s large hand on his shoulder, still surprised after all those years that a man of his size could move so silently. D’Artagnan hovered at the edge until Athos gently shooed him closer. 

“Do you see them, Danni?” Louisa said quietly to her daughter. “Those men over there that look a little rough around the edges? Those are your uncles. And they’ll do everything they can to keep you and everybody else in Quebec City safe.”

Her words were like a warm sucker punch to his ribcage, and Athos remembered making a very similar promise to another infant. 

Aramis rested his head against Porthos’s thigh and, despite everything, couldn’t seem to stop smiling.

 

A little while later, after Porthos and d’Artagnan had all but frog-marched an exhausted and white with pain Aramis from the maternity ward to the ER, Athos sat in the hard plastic chair next to Louisa’s bedside. 

“Athos?”

“Yes?”

She looked at him tiredly. “Are you awake?”

“More than you.”

Louisa giggled. “I knew you had a sense of humor buried somewhere under all that broody.” She nodded toward Danni. “Will you take her for a little bit?”

Well aware the last child he’d held had been his little brother, he was sure he was experiencing another out of body moment as he found himself agreeing. Before he could question it, Danni was cradled along his forearm and Louisa was taking a very well-deserved nap. 

He adjusted the tiny cap over her head and paced a gentle path from the chair to the window on the other side of the room. 

“I knew another little one like you once,” he murmured, unconsciously swaying from side to side as her tiny eyelids fluttered. “I would be honored to be one of your uncles.” He gave it a moment of thought. Both he and Porthos had the same last four letters to their names, which she would probably only be able to pronounce once she started to speak, and it could potentially pose a problem as to who was being addressed at the time. 

“We’ll let Porthos be your Uncle ‘Thos,” he continued, smiling softly as her blue eyes stared up at him. “You have an Uncle ‘Mis, who will spoil you rotten, an Uncle d’Art, and me. Your Uncle Ollie.”

Athos looked out the window at the twilight falling over Quebec City. It was his chosen occupation to keep the peace in the city, to keep her people safe. 

“I’ll keep you safe, too. I promise.”

Louisa let out a small contented sigh and finally drifted off to sleep. If there was one thing Rene had told her over and over, it was that Athos was a man of his word and he always - _always_ \- kept his promises.


	16. Variations on a Theme

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Saturday morning, as seen from four different sets of perspectives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. This is so fluffy it's going to rot your teeth. With some angst thrown in for good measure, because, well, why not. 
> 
> I adore you all. Seriously. You're the best readers a girl could ask for. As usual there's some stuff in the works, and in the meantime I hope you enjoy this. 
> 
> Oh, and I finally joined tumblr. I'm [here](http://awonderingsagittarius.tumblr.com/), so drop by and say hi. 
> 
> Also, I apologize if anyone is wildy - or mildly - OOC. It feels like they are. 
> 
> But seriously. I adore you all.

**Aramis & Porthos**  
Saturday mornings were Porthos’s favorite. They weren’t usually working, and there was no rush to get up and around for church like there was on Sunday. Well, Aramis rushed to get up and around, mostly due to his inability to physically get out of bed in a timely fashion on anything other than a weekday. 

Granted, Porthos wasn’t much help when it came to assisting him, preferring to hunker under the covers and do his best to haul Aramis back into the warmth of the bed when he strayed too close to the edge. 

There were no such shenanigans on Saturdays.

The sunlight through the curtains woke him. He was pleasantly content, Aramis a warm weight sprawled bonelessly along his right side. Porthos stroked his fingers through the unruly mop of hair just below his chin with a small sigh. 

Nobody was shooting at them. Any and all active cases could wait until Monday. There was nothing more pressing for either of them at the moment than what they were doing – Porthos a living pillow for his best friend and boyfriend, and Aramis deeply, blissfully asleep in the way that only happened in the right circumstances. 

He dipped his chin, pressing a soft kiss to Aramis’s hair. The man in question murmured, rolling slightly so he was mostly on Porthos. Aramis’s free right arm trailed up over Porthos’s shoulder, tightening briefly as he found a new, more comfortable position and settled heavily once more. 

Porthos tucked the blankets and comforter more securely around them – especially Aramis, who got cold easily – and closed his eyes. There was no better place to be on a Saturday morning.

 

**Athos & Ninon**  
She was an early riser. She always had been, and it had worked well in college when she’d been able to structure her class schedule to reflect it. Back when she’d been a child, up with the sun and before her parents, she’d dealt with it by watching cartoons. Her early teen years had seen a decrease in cartoon watching, and an increase in book reading in her favorite chair in the wee hours of the morning. 

Ninon still woke when the sun first peeked over the horizon, but she no longer had to actively fight the urge to immediately get up and make something of the day. Instead, she found it much more enjoyable to sort of laze around for a few hours, snuggled beneath the covers. Possibly with a good book. 

Having another warm, sleeping body in the bed with her, too, was an absolute bonus.

Athos was not a morning person. He was, perhaps, inclined to be a night owl, but he met the dawn with anything but grace and poise. There might have been a little loss of dignity, too.

It had taken weeks for her to convince him that just because she was awake didn’t mean he had to be. He’d done it the first couple times out of misplaced obligation, and, according to Aramis, it had made him an absolute bear to work with. 

But Saturdays weren’t working days, thankfully, and she took a deep, contented breath. She lay on her side, Athos’s furnace-like warmth spooned up behind her. He had a leg between hers, an arm curled tightly around her belly, and his faced tucked into the curve of her neck where it met her shoulder. How he could breath like that was a mystery, but he slept on. 

She turned another page in the paperback she wasn’t really reading and then trailed her fingertips lightly over the back of Athos’s hand. His fingers twitched, and he tried to burrow closer with a sigh. 

In a little while she’d find a way out of his hold so she could make a pot of coffee, but for the moment she let Athos’s soft, rhythmic breathing lull her into a state of utter contentment.

 

**Constance & d’Artagnan**  
It was a rarity to sleep late. There was always something to be done, some bit of housework to start or finish, some errand to run. She rarely, if ever, had time to relax. 

Her divorce hadn’t helped any. Of course it made her happier to be out from the unhealthy relationship that had been her and Jacques, and she was certainly sleeping better, but it didn’t mean everything was sunshine and roses. The lawyers were still settling things, and she was still getting used to the fact that what little possessions he’d had in the house were finally gone. He’d always been away travelling for business so it hadn’t felt like he was in the house at all to begin with, but even the little hints of him were missing now. 

It was unsettling, in a way, and she didn’t quite know what to do with it. Nor did she really know what to do about the fledgling… _thing_ with d’Artagnan. The mutual feelings had always been there, and now that they had been given free reign to explore them, Constance was torn between feeling as though she were drowning in it, and flying from it. 

She loved him. She knew this. What she didn’t know was how the rest of the world would take it, and while part of her demanded she not give a rat’s ass, the other part of her wondered what their three closest mutual friends would think. 

It was, ultimately, the chaos in her brain that woke her on Saturday morning. She was alone in bed, and the coolness of the sheets where d’Artangna would normally be suggested he’d been gone a while. She rolled onto her other side and drew the duvet to her chin. It would have been nice to have some Saturday morning snuggles. 

There was a slight commotion outside the door in the hallway, and she shifted enough to look without having to leave her little cave of warmth. d’Artagnan, muttering under his breath, nudged the door further open with his foot. He carried a cup of coffee in one hand, and a plate of – pancakes, from the smell – in the other. 

“Hey,” he said, face brightening when he saw she was awake. “Good morning.”

She watched him put the plate and mug on the bedside table, forehead creased in confusion. He leaned on the mattress and tenderly kissed the wrinkles away. 

“So, I couldn’t find a tray or anything, so I had to just – well…” d’Artagnan flushed, and kissed the end of her nose. “I made you breakfast. And coffee. Because I love you.”

Her heart threatened to burst through her ribcage, and she smiled widely. Saturday mornings with d’Artagnan had just become her favorite day of the week. 

 

**Armand & Treville**  
It was difficult to turn off the routine that had governed most of his adult life. He remembered all the Saturday mornings he’d spent in bed with Coralyn, either making sweet love to her, or just holding her. The rest of the world, the ugly of it that he combatted every day as a Musketeer, couldn’t touch them there. 

He remembered those days fondly, much like he remembered her. Even all these years later he loved her as fiercely and joyfully as he did then, when he’d first saw her. 

His internal clock woke him at roughly the same time it did during the week. The movements were the same, too, except that the first thing he did was make sure the kitchen door was unlocked. The kettle went on the stove, and the coffee pot gurgled happily on the counter. A few of the bakery-bought scones went on a cooking sheet and into the oven, and then he waited. 

Armand arrived – promptly, like always – and eight-thirty, and settled himself at the table. He unfurled the newspaper he carried tucked under his arm, and tutted at the headlines until Treville pushed a plate with a warm scone on it in front of him. He abandoned the newspaper with a small sigh, and fixed his tea the way he liked it. 

Treville was, and probably always will be, utterly fascinated by Aramand’s routine. Armand breathed in the fragrant steam, blowing lightly on the surface of it until it was cool enough. The corners of Treville’s mouth twitched upward, and he struggled not to smile outright at the look of bliss Armand’s features took after his first sip. 

The tension he’d carried all week through his shoulders bled out; he thought fondly of Coralyn, and only half-listened as a half-caffeinated Armand tore his way through the opinions page of the paper.


	17. Gold Badge of Courage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _It defined them as peacekeepers, as members of the law enforcement community as a whole._
> 
>  
> 
> _It defined them as officers of the Special Investigations and Tactical Response Unit._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm an awful human being. Namely because this was created by a very talented SITRU AU fan, and it's been sitting in my inbox for a shamefully long time. 
> 
> For that, pluxaplong, you have my eternal apologies. 
> 
> Thank you, once again, for this beautiful piece. And I am so very, very sorry it took me so long to share it.

It defined them as peacekeepers, as members of the law enforcement community as a whole.

It defined them as officers of the Special Investigations and Tactical Response Unit.

It defined his choices, the paths he’d wandered from a broken childhood to his adult years. The courses he’d taken at junior college had led him to Treville and the SITRU, and even on his darkest days – the ones he thought wouldn’t ever end, and that nothing could go right, and they’d surely all die horrifically – he was reminded of his choices every time he looked at that etched fleur-de-lis.

He ran his fingertips over it.

“You ready?”

His head snapped around to look at Athos in the doorway.

“Absolutely.” Porthos stood, and pocketed his shield as he followed Athos from the conference room.


	18. Inter-Office Memos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SITRU Inter-Office Memos, emails, and text messages.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the really fun part about moving is the sorting, packing, and occasionally finding bits of fic that I worked on at some point, put somewhere, and kind of forgot about. There's only a few of these right now, but hopefully they give you a giggle, and hold you over until I can get something more substantial finished. 
> 
> Thank you, as always. You're the best readers/fans/awesome people a writer could hope for, and I deeply appreciate it. 
> 
> And, just because I haven't in a while, I don't own anything recognizable, and the government takes all my money for student loans each month.

**[To: ALL]**

**[From: bonacieux.c@sitru.qc.ca]**

To Whom It May Concern,

Captain Treville's pet peeves are **not** to be used as your "bucket list". (This means you, Team One.)

Please remember to properly fill out your paperwork in a timely fashion, most notably anything that needs to be filed under liability or collateral.

Have a wonderful afternoon!

-Constance

 

* * *

 

 

**[ Aramis]**

So...is there a special form to fill out if one accidentally loses all the evidence on a case?

**[ Athos]**

What do you mean by ALL the evidence?

**[ Aramis]**

All of it. Like, all the evidence. It's gone.

**[ Athos]**

Gone how?

**[ Aramis]**

Up in smoke. Boom.

 

**[ Athos]**

22kg of explosives and 2 crates of illegal ammunition. Boom?

**[ Porthos]**

Big boom.

 

**[ Aramis]**

What's the property damage compensation form called again?

**[ Athos]**

Why?

**[ Aramis]**

....we need about six copies.

 

* * *

 

 

**~~Official~~ Special Investigations and Tactical Response Unit ~~Handbook~~ Guidelines:**

**1)** If Captain Treville tells you to do something - DO IT IMMEDIATELY

    **1A)** The same applies if the instructions come from Officer de la Fere.

 **2)** Never tell (even as a joke) a SITRU sniper they can't do something and/or their skill is dumb luck. They will prove you wrong in the most humiliating way possible.

 **3)** Constance is a Saint.

 **4)** Failure to properly fill out the correct paperwork the first time will result in resubmitting it in triplicate.

 **5)** Do not approach Team One unless and until they have had at least one cup of coffee each.

 **6)** Do not mention the phrase 'herding cats' around either the Captain or Officer de la Fere.

 **7)** Never, under any circumstances, get involved in intra-team dynamics

    ie - it is perfectly fine and acceptable for Officer d la Fere to inquire where Office d'Herblay has placed his intelligence.

    **7A)** The next person to sign them up for sensitivity training will practice hand to hand combat techniques with Porthos until Judgement Day arrives.

 **8)** Fighting like a gentleman is overrated.

 **9)** The SITRU is not liable if a fellow officer visitor to the Garrison main floor gets pegged in the head with a Nerf dart, as it's considered sanctioned sniper training.

 **10)** NEVER get involved in an argument between Captain Treville and Offier de la Fere. You  will be collateral.

 **11)** 'Camping' is a dirty word. Use at your own risk.

 **12)** Avoid Officer d'Herblay during Lent.

    **12A)** Depending on what Officer d'Herblay deigned to give up, avoid Officer duVallon, too.

_Failure to abide by any of the previously mentioned guidelines may result in bodily injury or personal insult._

 

* * *

 

 

**[To: delafere.o@sitru.qc.ca]**

**[From: t** **reville.ja@sitru.qc.ca** **]**

Athos,

HR is demanding you take the required time off for team building. They suggest a ropes course and woodland retreat.

-Treville

 

**[To: treville.ja@sitru.qc.ca]**

**[From: delafere.o@sitru.qc.ca]**

Captain,

HR can go pound salt. Call the last six months team building.

Woodland retreat? Really? Are they totally clueless?

-Athos

 

**[To: delafere.o@sitru.qc.ca]**

**[From: treville.ja@sitru.qc.ca]**

You team build or I take you off rotation. Their rules, not mine.

 

**[To: treville.ja@sitru.qc.ca]**

**[From: delafere.o@sitru.qc.ca]**

_The content of this message was blocked by the internal filter for the following reasons: Contains inappropriate language.  
_

 

 

**[To: duvallon.p@sitru.qc.ca; dherblay.r@sitru.qc.ca]**

**[From: delafere.o@sitru.qc.ca]**

We team build or they take us off rotation.

Suggestions?

 

**[To: duvallon.p@sitru.qc.ca; delafere.o@sitru.qc.ca]**

**[From: dherblay@sitru.qc.ca]**

_The content of this message was blocked by the internal filter for the following reasons: Contains inappropriate language._

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [This is Where The Helicopters Came to Take Me Away](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1563020) by [serapheim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/serapheim/pseuds/serapheim)




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